Today's stuff: pumpkin gingerbread cookies I made for Halloween:
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Monday, November 29, 2010
The Home Stretch
Today's stuff: pumpkin gingerbread cookies I made for Halloween:
Monday, June 30, 2008
Educational Cake
While in line to see Iron Man, my friend Shawn said, "I'd want an Indiana Jones birthday cake". I was pretty sure he wasn't hinting, but that didn't stop me from making it anyway. The cake making was complicated by two things:
1. Shawn is a very picky eater.
2. I didn't remember anything about Indiana Jones.
But I tried my best and it turned out semi-decent. More importantly, I learned a lot.
Many thanks to our friend Adrienne who was kind enough to take the pictures below.
When I think of Indiana Jones, the first thing I think of is brown. The second thing is that scene where the guy rips the other guy's heart out and it beats in his hand. I don't have the skills to make a beating heart cake topper (but hope to add it to my repertoire by Valentine's Day!), so I decided to make the cake brown using the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The cake itself was a double recipe of the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes from the same book. I topped the cake with a "whip" made of marzipan and wrote Happy Birthday Shawn in the closest I could get to the Indiana Jones font.
I used the Crimson Velveteen Cupcake recipe, not a regular cake recipe, because I already knew the birthday boy liked it. Oddly, I was short a tabelspoon of food coloring, but was still able to taste it in the cake. I've made this recipe as cupcakes many times and never experienced that before. It was really weird. Because it wasn't a cake recipe, the cakes turned out a little larger than they should have and the tops rounded. I was dumb and it didn't occur to me to trim them until the next day, so as you can see here, the cake was very lopsided and has a noticeable seam:
My first idea was to make a fedora (or heart full of cherry pie filling) out of home made chocolate clay, but after discussing it with Adrienne, I decided to stick with marzipan because I already knew Shawn liked it and a whip because it should be relatively easy. I used Wilton's coloring paste on it and it ended up the exact same color as the frosting. That wasn't good, so I added some black. Then it was 3 AM and I decided the color was good enough, so I worked on the shape, modeled after this picture.
For the writing, I printed out the Happy Birthday and tried to trace it onto cardboard using a Xacto knife. Unfortunately, I don't have any hand-eye coordination, so Adrienne had to trace out the stencil for me instead. I thought that if I frosted the whole cake, then put the stencil on top of it, I'd ruin the frosting, so I left a blank area for the stencil, which I filled in using a pastry bag and some light yellow royal icing. I then went over it with some orange food coloring on my finger, then red over that. I intended on using a small knife to frost between the letters, but once I was done, I knew that'd never work and ended up with a naked stripe across the cake. Next time, I'll definitely frost the whole thing, do the stencil, then just smooth the defects in the frosting as best as I can.
As you can see, it totally needed more filling:
The final thing I learned making this cake: brown marzipan looks like a turd. D'oh!
Thankfully, that was my last cake for June. As far as I know, July will be a month of rest. Then I hope to bake for two or three people in August, depending on who lets me honor their birthday in pastry fashion.
1. Shawn is a very picky eater.
2. I didn't remember anything about Indiana Jones.
But I tried my best and it turned out semi-decent. More importantly, I learned a lot.
Many thanks to our friend Adrienne who was kind enough to take the pictures below.
When I think of Indiana Jones, the first thing I think of is brown. The second thing is that scene where the guy rips the other guy's heart out and it beats in his hand. I don't have the skills to make a beating heart cake topper (but hope to add it to my repertoire by Valentine's Day!), so I decided to make the cake brown using the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The cake itself was a double recipe of the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes from the same book. I topped the cake with a "whip" made of marzipan and wrote Happy Birthday Shawn in the closest I could get to the Indiana Jones font.
I used the Crimson Velveteen Cupcake recipe, not a regular cake recipe, because I already knew the birthday boy liked it. Oddly, I was short a tabelspoon of food coloring, but was still able to taste it in the cake. I've made this recipe as cupcakes many times and never experienced that before. It was really weird. Because it wasn't a cake recipe, the cakes turned out a little larger than they should have and the tops rounded. I was dumb and it didn't occur to me to trim them until the next day, so as you can see here, the cake was very lopsided and has a noticeable seam:
My first idea was to make a fedora (or heart full of cherry pie filling) out of home made chocolate clay, but after discussing it with Adrienne, I decided to stick with marzipan because I already knew Shawn liked it and a whip because it should be relatively easy. I used Wilton's coloring paste on it and it ended up the exact same color as the frosting. That wasn't good, so I added some black. Then it was 3 AM and I decided the color was good enough, so I worked on the shape, modeled after this picture.
For the writing, I printed out the Happy Birthday and tried to trace it onto cardboard using a Xacto knife. Unfortunately, I don't have any hand-eye coordination, so Adrienne had to trace out the stencil for me instead. I thought that if I frosted the whole cake, then put the stencil on top of it, I'd ruin the frosting, so I left a blank area for the stencil, which I filled in using a pastry bag and some light yellow royal icing. I then went over it with some orange food coloring on my finger, then red over that. I intended on using a small knife to frost between the letters, but once I was done, I knew that'd never work and ended up with a naked stripe across the cake. Next time, I'll definitely frost the whole thing, do the stencil, then just smooth the defects in the frosting as best as I can.
As you can see, it totally needed more filling:
The final thing I learned making this cake: brown marzipan looks like a turd. D'oh!
Thankfully, that was my last cake for June. As far as I know, July will be a month of rest. Then I hope to bake for two or three people in August, depending on who lets me honor their birthday in pastry fashion.
Monday, May 12, 2008
In Recovery
After all the baking I've been doing, when it came time to cook for this week, I wanted to make something fast and easy, to give myself time to recover. Healthy would be good too, but it wasn't a priority. I just wanted to get out of the kitchen before midnight, after the Mother's Day festivities (dinner and a movie - Iron Man. The whole family loved it, even my grandmother, who went in saying "I don't like that nonsense."). Chickpea Broccoli Casserole from Vegan With a Vengeance to the rescue.
If you have a food processor, the active prep time for this casserole is probably about ten minutes. But if you have one of these, don't use the slicing blade to slice the chives. You may have better luck with the S-blade, but I don't know. With the slicing blade, I ended up with really long, thin chives. And I left them that way. It's all good.
The hardest part of this was mashing all the chickpeas because I didn't use a large enough bowl. That's it. There isn't even a fancy spice blend (though I'm sure you could add it, if you wanted to). Just olive oil, vegetable broth and salt. I didn't even have to mince any garlic!
This is probably the healthiest tasting dish I've made from one of Isa's books. It tastes very good, but it sort of tastes like how you'd expect vegan food to taste, which is not what I expect from an Isa recipe. That said, with all the crap I've been eating lately, "health food" was a welcome change.
It's not the prettiest or fanciest of dishes, but it's filling (and healthy and easy) and that's good enough for me.
If you have a food processor, the active prep time for this casserole is probably about ten minutes. But if you have one of these, don't use the slicing blade to slice the chives. You may have better luck with the S-blade, but I don't know. With the slicing blade, I ended up with really long, thin chives. And I left them that way. It's all good.
The hardest part of this was mashing all the chickpeas because I didn't use a large enough bowl. That's it. There isn't even a fancy spice blend (though I'm sure you could add it, if you wanted to). Just olive oil, vegetable broth and salt. I didn't even have to mince any garlic!
This is probably the healthiest tasting dish I've made from one of Isa's books. It tastes very good, but it sort of tastes like how you'd expect vegan food to taste, which is not what I expect from an Isa recipe. That said, with all the crap I've been eating lately, "health food" was a welcome change.
It's not the prettiest or fanciest of dishes, but it's filling (and healthy and easy) and that's good enough for me.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Remix Primavera
I was quite the busy bee last Sunday. After I finished making the Herbed Winter Vegetable Roast, I "invented" my first recipe ever. I call it Remix Primavera.
Remix Primavera is spaghetti squash topped with left over vegetables from VWAV's awesome vegetable broth.
I used these instructions to prepare the spaghetti squash, halving it lengthwise, sticking it in the microwave then scraping the crap out of it with a fork. I heated my portion of leftover vegetables for two minutes, also in the microwave, before throwing them on top of the squash.
Total prep time: 20ish minutes
Outcome: Light taste but filling. The vegetables absorb the wonderful flavor of the broth and release some of the liquid when heated up. The squash absorbs the broth, turning the whole thing into a giant pile of yum. I ate it at room temperature because I took it with me to see Across the Universe (I liked some parts, hated others, didn't make me run screaming from the theater, so that's something, isn't it?) and ended up engaged in conversation with the man next to me about the merits of my meal versus his M&M Peanuts. He wanted my Remix. About a cup and a half of the Remix (one whole spaghetti squash + vegetables) was enough to keep me full through the movie, wandering about town with my friends and a concert (The Go! Team, who were awesome, but their openers sucked).
I also roasted the seeds from the spaghetti squash with the butternut and acorn squash seeds (I can't tell the difference between them. Can you?).
Remix Primavera is spaghetti squash topped with left over vegetables from VWAV's awesome vegetable broth.
I used these instructions to prepare the spaghetti squash, halving it lengthwise, sticking it in the microwave then scraping the crap out of it with a fork. I heated my portion of leftover vegetables for two minutes, also in the microwave, before throwing them on top of the squash.
Total prep time: 20ish minutes
Outcome: Light taste but filling. The vegetables absorb the wonderful flavor of the broth and release some of the liquid when heated up. The squash absorbs the broth, turning the whole thing into a giant pile of yum. I ate it at room temperature because I took it with me to see Across the Universe (I liked some parts, hated others, didn't make me run screaming from the theater, so that's something, isn't it?) and ended up engaged in conversation with the man next to me about the merits of my meal versus his M&M Peanuts. He wanted my Remix. About a cup and a half of the Remix (one whole spaghetti squash + vegetables) was enough to keep me full through the movie, wandering about town with my friends and a concert (The Go! Team, who were awesome, but their openers sucked).
I also roasted the seeds from the spaghetti squash with the butternut and acorn squash seeds (I can't tell the difference between them. Can you?).
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