I hate cupcakes. From the production side, they land in a maximum valley of inefficiency as 12 cupcakes can serve 10 people such that no one is satisfied and such that I have to spend twice as long as if I had made an actual cake decorating them. Cupcakes have no presence, sure they can be decorated and sometimes you can do some neat shit will fillings but otherwise, I consider them a waste of time. Today I made red velvet cupcakes in response to a request and wanted to frost them, but not knowing the appropriate tool, I reached out to my more skilled baking friends and quickly raged when I found that there was an entire specialized culinary armory for topping the lil’ bastards. Baby offset spatulas, piping bags, icing guns, and legion implements strictly designed to make a hat of sweetened gel were in my future until Grant Keiser proposed a solution, “use a knife, call it ‘rustic’ and charge twice as much”.
Tag: cooking
Party Leftovers
Yesterday’s party seemed expensive, but as I panned across my table to see the spoils of left overs I grinned. I had a bag of chips, 1/2 a pound of cheese, 2 boardfeet of crackers, 4 dozen cookies, 5 herb muffins, and lots of cashews. My original intent was to have a soup to nuts meal, but whereas I chose cashews, it turned out being soup to drupes. I’m fine with that as a tradition.
Interrobangsgiving
Ashley, Alex and I had stayed up late and rose for Thanksgiving day around 2 PM. I contacted Mitch who was to be the host for Thanksgiving and received a nebulous response of “my shoulder hurts and I’m hung over. Fuck Thanksgiving” when I asked him about a good arrival time. I indicated he’d be shark chum if he canceled and we arrived around 4 PM to him preparing shells and cheese. We and he had very different definitions of what a Thanksgiving meal consisted of so after he called around for someone who had overprepared and found none, we left to find a super market that was still open. As we traveled from closed Publix to closed Publix we found something magical, a Thanksgiving Carnival.
To me, traveling carnivals seem to be exercises in self-parody like this gem:
You couldn’t pay an artist to have a more depressing arrangement of lights that could shatter the dreams of a child. They had the obligatory rides and vendors of foodstuffs as well as the Photoshop booth where one is chromakeyed into some sort of shot. Being a sucker for farce I asked “do you have something with rainbows, a unicorn, and possibly some teen pop icon”, she said yes and later we received the following:
Alex bought a funnel cake and I went on a hunt for an Italian sausage and, finding a well equipped food stand, saw they had turkey. We asked if it was available and were told “that’s for us”. This redoubled our efforts at finding an open grocer and, after winning a gold fish, we continued driving.
Walmart was still open and after a brief debate between “make it ourselves” vs. “Golden Corral” the former won and we purchased Thanksgiving. All the parts assembled, we were nearly back to Mitch’s house when his aunt called. Apparently both she and Mitch’s grandmother had prepared a raft of food, not knowing the other would and our purchases turned into a talisman against hunger.
On the way back, Ashley noticed that the floor of my car by her feet was wet, very wet and I chalked it up to something having spilled. Otherwise, Thanksgiving turned out surprisingly ok.
Accidental Family Dinner
I prepared pork cuts today for dinner for my father and myself but had sized the meal for nine people so I could have some leftovers for the next few days. It turns out that neither of my housemates had eaten so they joined and there were four of us around the table and things got very quiet.
Housemate 1: The rice is strong.
Housemate 2: Yes, but it is less strong if you mix it with the pork.
Housemate 1: Yes.
—Silence—
Me: How were the rolls?
Housemate 2: Fine, except for the burnt part I had, that was not fine.
Me: Yes, the burnt part was not supposed to be burnt. Sorry.
Housemate 2: That’s ok. The rest of it was fine.
—Silence—
My dad: These pork chops were big.
Housemate 1: Yes.
Housemate 2: Yes.
Me: Ok
—Silence—
I think we need to work on our small talk.
Beating the Prep Clock
Making a tart tatin is by no means hard, but I was initially thrown off by the 60 minute prep time. Normally, the actual prep time for me is 150% to 250% of the prep time stated and the cook time is 10-20% more but after executing the recipe I had 40 minutes left on my prep clock and I pumped my fist in triumph. At Teejay’s I debuted my tart and served its puff pastry covered goodness with ice cream. Val looked at me and said “this is good, I like that the peels were left on”. Peels left on…. hm…. as the conversation continued I drifted off wondering if the recipe did call for peeled apples. I broke down and brought up Epicurious on my phone: “7-9 peeled Gala apples” laughed at me.
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Bananas Foster
Whenever I go to buy something at a liquor store, something I’ve done less than 5 times, I feel like a lost child. I walk to the store attendant, tug on their pant leg and say “I need booze”. I always know nearly exactly what I need to the point where I should just have a note pinned to my jacket that says “banana liquor and dark rum <3 Mom” maybe with a $50 bill under it just in case I forget how money works. I got my alcohol and darted.
Next was the trial run at home of bananas foster, a dish revered by rum enthusiasts and camp commissioners that it is at the upper end of how much alcohol I’ll tolerate as even after ignition plus simmering 2/3rds of the alcohol remains. In my test run at home, I ran into a problem; to get the alcohol to ignite I had to heat it, but the oven is immediately under my microwave so I’d ignite the alcohol, wait for condensation to form on the microwave and start to sizzle, remove the dish from the heat, wipe the microwave and repeat. My expert assessment panel said it wasn’t sweet enough so I upped the proportion of butter, brown sugar and allspice by 50%. Starting Recipe
Square Cheesecake
I was called mad for making a square cheesecake but after watching a cake cutting pattern best described as cubist I decided on a shape less likely to succumb to the surgeon-during-an-earthquake style that’s currently used by my coworkers. Square baking is tricky, as there’s the pointy bits that’ll finish first but with temperature control this can be eliminated.
Or at least I thought it could. The middle cooked but also kinda collapsed as sometimes happens with custards. I hid my mistake with a pool of ganache topped with fudge. I got the comfort of knowing that an 8×8 could server 16 people with 2″x2″ pieces and they got… fudge.
The Dark Side of Brownie Experimentation
The “smash brownie” phase has drawn to an end where I’d take one foodstuff and shove it onto a brownie. This included:
- Crackerjack brownies
- Butterfingers brownies
- Granola brownies
- Cookie brownies
I tried to make s’more brownies today which consisted of brownies covered in chocolate covered in marshmallows covered in graham crackers. The idea seemed reasonable and I took the brownie out at the 2/3 way point to add the marshmallows and graham crackers.  I tried a piece when all was done and I’m glad I use Eggbeaters which aren’t subject to salmonella. The top parts were perfect, though, so I thought I’d just pop it back in for 15 minutes or so and finish the bottom. No dice. I was afraid of overcooking the marshmallows so I decided to try to finish the brownie portion on the oven top. The pile eventually finished such that the brownie came out like fudge cream but the marshmallows could remove bridgework. A coworker described it as one of the tastiest choking hazards he’d ever had and another said it was a reminder that he’d need to visit his dentist.
Bean Rebellion
My father and I eat very well on long weekends as I have time to prepare proper meals. I made a Santa Fe stew which takes about 10 hours to prepare, most of which is stewing, and left it in the crock pot for a self-serve dinner. I ate before my dad and came down to see him feeding a portion of his stew to the dog.
Me: Problem with the stew?
Dad: No, I just thought Max would enjoy the black beans more than I would.
Me: Traitor, I spent my youth dodging my mortal enemy, green beans forced upon me by my mother and here I see you feeding beans to the dog. Turncoat!
Dad: No, it was your mother, and I hated her beans too, but before you were born she switched from green beans to black beans if I complained. I was exchanging one thing I hated for another.
Me: Touche. If we go over mom’s for Christmas and she prepares beans and you say anything about me not eating them you’re going to have six months of black beans when I get fired.
Dad: Deal.
Mandoline Works Too Well
My apple cake may be the most universally loved of my baked goods but dicing a pound of apples is tedious and the finer the piece the better the cake so I hit my now, rather dusty, mandoline. I set the blade at about an 3/16ths with the 3/16ths grating teeth and went to town slowly rotating the apple to minimize piece size. The pieces still seemed too thick so I lowered the blade incline and started again. My arm got tired so I didn’t rotate nearly as often and on the 3rd apple I lost focus and felt the blade against finger. No cut or anything but I shaved off several pieces of fingernail. I didn’t want to expose either my family or work to pieces of my fingernail so I did the courageous thing and ate it all myself. I’m delicious.
Stop reading if you’re easily grossed out: Maybe I should take some of the shavings from my PedEgg and sprinkle them into my cookies.