In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, I thought it would be fitting to make a piñata cake. Mostly I just wanted to see if I could. I hadn't yet made a cake that required major structural support and thought this would be a nice way to ease into it.

My little burro had to have something to hold up his midsection or he would collapse under his own weight. I started by cutting a dowel into even sections for his legs. I then cut a basic body shape out of two pieces of cardboard. One to attach the feet to and one to place the body on which would be put together later. I thought it would be easier to work with this way without worrying that the legs would crumple while I was carving the body and head.

I notched out some small holes for the legs and then glued them in for stability. I cut the body out of a 8" round cake using the base piece as a guide. Next, I cut a cake baked in a loaf pan in half and began carving the shape of the head and nose. For the ears, I decided it would be easier to carve it out of one piece with a sloping base that served as the forehead instead of trying to attach (and stabilize) two separate ears. This worked out really well and once there was a thin layer of icing between the sections, it was surprisingly steady without any extra support.

With Cinco de Mayo right around the corner, my brain is buzzing with thoughts of Mexican food -- burritos, tamales, chorizo. But at some point, thoughts switch to faux Mexican dishes, the US concoctions that are more fusion than ethnic. This then leads me to my first forays into recipe creation. I've been cooking and baking since I was a little kid, but it wasn't until I hit puberty and got sick of those too-simple Old El Paso taco mixes that I discovered that recipes are nice, but not necessary.

My mother handed the kitchen over to me, and told me to make my own tacos, since I wasn't happy with the dry, plain mix. In a flurry, I was pulling out old spices that were covered with dust, sniffing, shrugging, and throwing them in. I scoured the fridge for anything that might work and added that. In a blink, I had a meal that was better than any powder or simple sauce. It was just as easy, there was no extra mess, and the result was so very worth it.

Check out the "recipe" after the jump, and let me know what your first unique creation was.

With Cinco de Mayo coming up after the weekend, Chicago-area Mexican-Americans reminisce with traditional foods:

• Vegetable-stuffed peppers
  
• Ranchero sauce
• Mango and jicama salsa
• Mexican meatball soup
• Salsa Soup
• Tortillas at home
• Seafood 'cocktail' to start the meal
• Grilled cheese with beans
• Chorizo in an easy noodle dish
• Spicy stew with hominy

Also, for preparation in the kitchen:

• Equipping a kitchen with the right tools
• Mexican beer tasting: Forget the lime, go for flavor
• Achieving taco greatness starts in your kitchen
• Mexican cooking classes
• #2 By the numbers
• Mexican chef offers free cooking pointers
• By the numbers

There's also a Mexican Food Quiz, a list of some essential Mexican ingredients, and Mexican Cookbooks.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Cinco de Mayo is not Spanish for 'another excuse to get totally faced.' What Cinco de Mayo has come to signify in this country, however, is exactly that. Just like we knock back Guinness on St. Patrick's Day and gorge ourselves on beer and brats during Oktoberfest, Cinco de Mayo has become our way of showing appreciation for our Mexican neighbors in the best way we know how; by getting slobber-faced.

This upcoming May 5, we'll be raising glasses of tequila. So let's take a minute and find out exactly what is in that glass and clear up some misconceptions.

I didn't realize until a few years ago that in most other parts of the US, Cinco de Mayo isn't as huge a deal as it is here in LA. For some reason, I just assumed that everyone around the country used the "holiday" as an excuse to eat chips and salsa, drink margaritas, and shoot tequila to messy excess. Well, given that we also had the The Fight, and Derby Day yesterday, it's no surprise that I sort of "missed" my own Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Still, that doesn't mean that the gorgeous mango, lime, and margarita glass that have been sitting on my countertop should go to waste. Since Cinco de Mayo has already past, let's just call today Cinco de Mango, and enjoy the Mango Salsa from the National Mango Board, which LAist Lindsay William-Ross has already made and photograhed. The recipe for the salsa is after the jump, and for more mango recipes, check out www.mangoinfo.org.

Over the next few days, we will be getting ready for Cinco de Mayo here at Slashfood, and I decided there is no better way to start the day than with coffee. Actually, make that Café de Olla, a Mexican-style sweetened black coffee. I first had this drink about ten years ago, and still make it periodically throughout the year. The flavor is bold and sweet, laced with the subtle flavors of cinnamon and anise.

Though I have come across many different ways to prepare this beverage, the following is a simplified version I've adapted over time. If any of you have any tips on making it better, please feel free to add your comments below. The full recipe can be found after the jump.

Sometimes, holidays just beg to be celebrated with fried foods. Yesterday, to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Jessica made churros and posted about them on her blog, Su Good Eats. Jessica tells us that churros got their start as a French dish, not a Mexican one, since they are based on choux pastry, which is typically used to make eclairs and cream puffs. In this case, of course, it is deep fried and rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture to make a crispy and delicious snack that you'll want to eat as soon as it's cool enough to pop into your mouth. Coincidentally, the recipe came from the same cookbook that was our cookbook of the day yesterday, Rick Bayless's Mexico One Day At A Time!

We're nosy, yes we are. So won't you tell us what you did last night for Cinco de Mayo? Maybe you ignored it completely and it was dinner as usual, maybe you threw your own party at home with a walking taco for everyone, or maybe you left work early, went to the closest cantina for cheap Cinco de Mayo happy hour (that would be "hora especial") specials, then made your way to who knows where before finally ending up at home this morning, in the same clothes, with a killer tequil-ler hangover. If that's the case, drink some water, turn off your computer and go back to bed!

Me? I tried to go somewhere, a couple of places, actually, but realized we'd be waiting in line for over an hour, so went to have Chinese food for dinner!

Like Valentine's Day, like St. Patrick's Day, like many other "holidays" in the United States, we take the word "holiday" literally and use Cinco de Mayo as a reason to celebrate. We call it a day early, head out to the closest Mexican restaurant or bar to indulge in way too many chips, salsa and guacamole, and celebrate with gleeful, drunken shouts of “Happy Cinco de Mayo!”

But as we clink lime-seasoned long-neck Coronas against our friend's salt-rimmed margarita glass, do we even know what we're celebrating? In fact, is Cinco de Mayo even a reason to celebrate at all, or should we just be respectfully observing the day? Do we all know why we do rows upon rows of tequila shots as if the 5th of May were the first day of Spring Break in Cancun?!

Friday is Cinco de Mayo.  Do you know what that means?

If you replied, "that the Applebee's next to the on-ramp had better pull down all those remaining 'St. Patrick's Day' and 'Kiss Me I'm Irish' streamers," you'd be wrong (although they probably should).

It means that you and your hombre had better go stock up on some cervezas, hermanita.
 
Everybody knows Negra Modelo and Corona, and everybody knows the differences between them: namely, that Negra Modelo is for frat boys, Corona for sorority girls. But here are four very-slightly-off-the-beaten-path options:

Bohemia: The Rey of Beers, this smooth, medium-bodied pilsener has been brewed since 1900. It's named after the famous beer-brewing region of what is now the Czech Republic.

Pacifico: The top-selling beer in Mexico, Pacifico is a pilsner. American travelers to the Baja Peninsula have brought back a fondness for this golden, full-flavored beer.

Tecate: Medium-bodied. Never in bottles. If you're a fan of the can, Tecate (teh-kah-tay) is your beer. 

Dos Equis: A Vienna-style lager. The name translates to "Two X's" or XX. Not to be confused with XXX, that movie with Vin Diesel. Watch XXX only after several Dos Equis.