Pickled Spines of Porcupines

1. Heat the oven to 130C/250F/gas mark 1.

2. Whisk egg whites to ?stiff peak? stage.

3. While beating, gradually add the caster sugar a little bit at a time. Whisk until it?s as stiff as the stiffest thing in the world, and then quickly whisk in the cornflour.

4. Now pipe 15 thin strips about 30cm long on to one of the baking sheets. If you don?t have a piping bag just put the mixture into a small plastic bag and snip a tiny bit off the corner to squeeze out of. It doesn?t matter if they are not perfectly straight, as these porcupine spines are pickled.

5. Make one big mound for the porcupine?s body with the leftover mixture and place on the other baking sheet. Place both sheets in the oven.

6. Bake the spines for about 30 minutes, and then take them out and leave on one side to cool. Leave the body in for a further 45 minutes or until the parchment peels away from the porcupine.

7. When the body is ready take it out and allow to cool (about 10?15 minutes), then make tiny little holes for the spines.

8. Paint 2cm-long strips of black on the spines, leaving 2cm strips unpainted in between. Stick the spines into the little holes. The food colouring will soften the spines fairly quickly so this creation has a 10-minute viewing time before you have to eat it.

To avoid a crisis with this recipe, when you are painting the black bits on the porcupine spines do so very lightly, and with only a tiny amount of the food colouring. If not, the spines go soggy and flop over like limp hair.

With thanks to The Roald Dahl Foundation