Make a Gingerbread MFAA antenna!

[vla22]

One of the future bits of the Square Kilometre Array will hopefully be a Mid-Frequency Aperture Array telescope. We have some prototype designs in Cambridge, one of which I have photographed: Obviously, what you want to do is build one out of gingerbread or similar, because you can.

LemonBread/Gingerbread/Cinnamonstoat

75g butter

150g plain flour

0.5 teaspoon xanthan gum (if you are using gf flour)

60g soft brown sugar

2 lemons, or 4 heaped teaspoons of ginger or other flavouring

1 egg

Icing sugar

Water

Pans & Oven:

Gas Mark 5/190C/375F

1 baking tray, lined with greased greaseproof paper

things to zest and juice lemons

rolling pin

Instructions:

Put your flour (and xanthan gum, if using) into a bowl. Cut the butter up into little pieces into the flour.

Make pastry - rub the butter into the flour until it’s like breadcrumbs.

Grate the zest of your lemons into the mixture (or add your ginger).

Stir in the sugar.

Add the egg, and stir it in.

Juice your lemons, and stir in the lemon juice until it forms a soft dough. (If it’s not forming a dough, add a little water - or a lot of water, if you’re not using lemons.)

Flour your working surface and rolling pin. Roll out your dough until it’s around 5mm thick.

Take the Useful Shapes provided with your recipe, and cut out four copies of each shape. Put the shapes on the greased baking tray stuff.

Bake for around 15-20 minutes, until they’re starting to brown.

Leave them to cool.

Avengers, assemble! Mix up icing sugar with a very very little water, until it forms a firm paste.

Put a blob on a plate. Use this to anchor the central pillar (see illustrated assembled antenna that is totally an antenna, not a mistake at Stoathenge), and assemble the pillar, putting icing sugar paste on each edge.

Quite quickly, put some paste on the largest trapezoid, and splat it against the central pillar. You’ll want the longest edge against the plate (this would totally wreck your antenna, so it’s a good job you’re making a Stoathenge).

Then add the other large trapezoids, making sure that they’re pointing the same way.

Assemble the next layer, pointing the trapezoids the other way (still with the longest edge towards the plate). Then the final layer, pointing your smallest trapezoids the same way as the largest set.

Congratulations! You can pick up Stoat Medium Wave.