· comments [12] · 11-12-2009 · categories:food · links ·
I hope you had a wonderful Halloween. Here is the result of our experiments with Blavod black vodka and strange ice, it was a lot of fun. (See also: my previous entry about creepy ice creations.)
The plastic skeleton embedded in an ice sphere was a lot of fun. In a drink it sort of rotated around on it's own and showed different bones, creepy.
On the left are gummy eyeballs I froze in a swizzle stick ice tray I found at Daiso, these were creepy submerged in a drink that had gone opaque (see just below). On the right is black vodka and orange juice, which turned a nicely disgusting greenish beige when mixed.
It took a few tries but I finally figured out how to float vodka in a flute. I filled the glass with juice (or tonic and lime), put in ice, put the vodka in a OXO small measuring cup with a spout and slowly poured the vodka, aiming it towards the topmost ice cube. It usually worked.
On the left is cranberry and vodka and small sphere ice, created in a tray bought at Daiso. The right is blood orange juice and black vodka (which I failed to float properly). There is a gummy eyeball on the end of a cocktail pick. I like the effect of the eyeball at the bottom of the glass. (The gummy eyeballs were from Target and tasted horrible.)
Vodka and tonic before and after mixing. In person it looked a lot more gray than green.
These are Brains! cocktails made in small shot glasses. I had good luck using a pipette to dispense the Irish cream, I dipped the end in the drink and slowly squeezed the Irish cream into the drink while moving the pipette around. I found this technique at Folkinz, which used a straw to a nice effect. The glasses on either side were given small droplets, but didn't look quite as spooky. They looked my like a cocktail that would be named Lymph Nodes!
Here is another skeleton layered inside of a squarish ice cube.
This is a White Russian made with black vodka, turning it a delightfully sickly gray/beige.
I attempted to capture the Frozen Smiles ice floating in tonic and cranberry, it looked creepier in person.
Trivia: the center glass is from Disgruntled Housewife and was aquired in a Smile and Act Nice gift bag from SXSW 2000 or 2001. If you're a knitter you might know Nicole better as the author of Thrifty Knitter (a website) and Naughty Needles (a book), and co-owner of The Harveyville Project (two middle schools in Kansas turned into spaces to encourage creative output, a daring and genius prospect). I've admired Nicole from afar for as long as I can remember, Disgruntled Housewife was one of the first websites I read.
My friend Maggi made these amazing (and delicious) gravestone cookies.
And here is my Halloween mirror picture. I was wearing synthetic hair extensions for the evening, my hair isn't nearly this long:
Hello!
· comments [24] · 11-3-2009 · categories:food · halloween ·
Pioneer Woman Home & Garden. A custom engraved cake pan, would make a great gift for the baker who loves you.
Pear Dumplings · Edible Crafts @ CraftGossip. These are adorable.
What is the gin to rule them all? | Ask Metafilter. Good short descriptions of a number of gins. I'm afraid I'm a big fan of the old juniper berry.
Ultimate Buttermilk Recipe Repository « Pink of Perfection. You know how you buy a whole carton of buttermilk for pancakes and then have a lot left over? This will help you with that.
The Burger Lab: The Fake Shack | A Hamburger Today.
StillTasty: Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide. Via Shelterrific.
candy_chart. Various temperatures, helpful for degrees of syrup as well as the usual candy stages, at Baking 911.
The world's best pancake recipe. at Kottke
Jell-O Head | Hanttula. A pixelated picture made from a table full of jello shots, I want to use this idea some day.
Irreference » Root Beer Float Pops.
· comments [5] · 11-2-2009 · categories:food · links ·
I made something gruesome and delicious.
No, really, it was good.
This is meatloaf.
Meatloaf with cheese on top.
And some ketchup.
The nails are made of onion.
The wrist bones are onion too.
Where are you going?
This is how I made it:
Since August I've had a post it note over my desk that simply said "meat hand". I mulled over how to make it for a while. I realized that the old formed inside a plastic glove thing wouldn't work since the fingers would cook so much faster than the rest of the hand. It wasn't until I saw this hand gelatin mold that I had my plan:
I shot several angles to show how it has a base built in, meaning I could probably use it to mold meatloaf.
I made the basic meatloaf recipe from How to Cook Everything using a food processor to chop the onions and carrot to a very fine mince so I could fill in the details of the mold without trouble. One meatloaf recipe using 2 pounds of meat will make two hands.
I sprayed the inside of the mold with cooking oil spray and it came out fairly easily. I put it on top of a rack to allow the fat to run off as it cooked.
I did a few versions, learning as I went along.
Version #1
The first one was straight meatloaf. I surrounded it with mashed potatoes and kale (or brain matter and swamp greens if you have kids, or just act like kids). It looked ok, sort of creepy:
Version #2
The next time I tried adding fingernails made of onion, which were just like press on nails:
To make the fingernails I sliced a thin round off of a single layer of an onion, then used kitchen scissors to trim it into a nail shape keeping the lines in the onion running the length of the nail. I kept the thinnest end of the onion slice at the tip of the nail. (Shown here using a red onion as it's easier to see details.)
I also covered it with ketchup before cooking:
It turned out gross:
This time to better define the fingers I piped mashed potatoes around the hand to define the shape. I just used a ziploc bag with a small corner snipped off to do the detail inbetween fingers, then I snipped off a larger corner to pipe around the hand. I smoothed down the mashed potatoes with a silicone spatula. The results where pretty creepy.
Version #3
The ketchup covered hand made me pretty happy but... I had this idea. My mom used to throw a slice of cheese on top of her meatloaf before cooking it and the cheese always turned out browned and crispy. I wondered how that would work with my relatively delicate hand. I also had the idea to use the smaller inner layers of the onion to create a cartoon-y wrist bone sticking out.
I made two versions. The first used white onion and was simply covered in cheese. The second used red onion and was covered with ketchup and then cheese. I used slices of provolone cheese because I knew it wouldn't slide off completely as it melted. (Maggi suggested it, thanks Maggi!) This time I used the version of meatloaf with spinach, again from How to Cook Everything. Here are some pre-cooked pictures:
I peeled an onion until I got to the smaller inner layers and simply pressed it into the wrist:
I trimmed the cheese to fit around the fingernails:
If I were to do it again I would have put less cheese around the fingers, or rather, I would have put narrower pieces. The cheese pooled inbetween the fingers and made it more difficult to diguise later on.
This cheese thing, it worked a bit too well. We couldn't bring ourselves to actually eat either of them (though, we had been eating a lot of meatloaf lately). Here is a picture showing them side by side. They were cooked at the same time and the one with the ketchup beneath the cheese (white fingernails) browned a bit more. You can also see that piping the detail more carefully can make a difference:
The wrist bone of the white onion was pushed out a bit as the meatloaf cooked:
The smaller onion piece of the red onion write bone wasn't as impressive:
The red onion fingernails were creepier, but the white onion fingernails might get the point across more quickly:
Here is a cute pumpkin pancake chaser:
Just in case you need it.
· comments [387] · 10-27-2009 · categories:food · halloween ·
Welcome to Not Martha’s Trick-Or-Eat post. Today, nine favorite food, craft & lifestyle bloggers await behind nine haunted houses with an array of holiday treats created just for you. At the end of this post, you will find two of these mystery houses. To join in the holiday fun, simply click on one of the buttons and you’ll be linked to the next home on the block. You can also discover all of the Trick-Or-TrEAT contributors and find direct links to their posts at Trick-Or-TrEAT. Happy Halloweening!
These are light and fluffy pumpkin pancakes made extra orange with food coloring and decorated for Halloween breakfast using cinnamon syrup that has been colored a dark black. I'm a bit obsessed with piping spiders onto things. Spiders scare the bejeezus out of me so it's not surprising I turn to them at Halloween.
The pancakes are delicious, I can say this since it isn't my recipe. The recipe comes from Noble Pig, whom I'd like to thank for being bold enough to put a whole stick of butter into the batter. They need to cook a little longer than my usual pancakes and I found they needed a slightly lower heat than I'd normally use or they'd burn before the proper amount of bubbles came to the surface.
I added twice the cinnamon to the syrup and cooked it a little longer to make sure it would be thick enough to pipe. When I took it off the heat my syrup read 213 degrees, just barely over boiling.
Pumpkin Pancakes with Cinnamon Syrup
(Recipe from Noble Pig.com, with a few small changes by Not Martha.org.)
Very Orange Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
- 1-3/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 egg, separated
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
- 1/2 cup butter, melted (1 stick)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- orange food coloring gel
In a large bowl, flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.
In a medium bowl, lightly beat egg yolk with a fork. Add milk, pumpkin puree and vanilla; mix well. Add melted butter. If the butter is hot, add it slowly or you will cook your egg yolk. Add a bit of the orange food coloring to the wet mixture at this point. Add more until it's about as orange as you can stand. Stir this mixture into dry ingredients, just until combined.
In another bowl, beat egg white until stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg white into batter.
Heat a griddle or large skillet over medium heat and grease lightly with vegetable oil. For each pancake, spoon about 1/4 cup batter onto the hot griddle. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface and the edges look dry. Turn over and cook until golden brown. The pancakes are delicate so stick to making small or medium sized pancakes, I put cracks in a few larger ones trying to flip them over.
Black Cinnamon Syrup
- 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
- 1/2 brown sugar
- 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup water
- black food coloring gel
In a saucepan combine white sugar, brown sugar, all-purpose flour and cinnamon. Stir dry ingredients together. Add vanilla extract and water. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Be really careful while boiling sugar, keep a bowl of ice water nearby just in case. As it heats squirt in a little of the black food coloring and mix in, add more until it's as dark as can be (it doesn't take much). Allow to boil for a few moments until the mixture has noticeably thickened. Remove from heat and allow to cool enough to put into a squirt bottle (of the ketchup style). You can make it the night before and warm it by dipping the squeeze bottle in a bowl of warm water. You might also have your pancake eaters create their own designs.
Decorate the pancakes with the syrup. By all means decorate the plate with extra syrup. I find spiders, spider webs and bats work out well. Serve with sausages, sausages are creepy looking enough on their own.
Here are some of the designs I tried that didn't quite work as I'd envisioned, a few details, and my first trials. What I'm not showing you is the two small pancakes I meant to look like a pair of eyeballs but ended up looking like a pair of something else, if you know what I mean.
Happy Halloween!
Whooo’s Next? To see what other Trick-Or-TrEAT hosts have cooked up for your viewing pleasure, click on one of the haunted homes below:
· comments [33] · 10-26-2009 · categories:food · halloween ·
Remember the Baker's Edge brownie pan? They have recently come out with a similar pan sized for lasagna noodles, it's called the Simple Lasagna Pan. They sent me one* and I'm very happy with it. I've made two lasagnas, the first was a recipe of Scott's mom which we, um, ate it before I could get a good picture. The one shown below is from a recipe that comes with the pan and can be found on the Baker's Edge website, the Quick and Delicious Lasagna (note: that links is to a PDF). It calls for using dry noodles and I like the texture of them when it's cooked. All their recipes can be found here. I'm hoping to find time to make the Ultimate Lasagna soon (note: PDF again).
The pan makes it so easy to remove a tidy square of lasagna to serve, and made portioning it out to freeze blissfully non-frustrating. Nothing stuck to the pan and it was very easy to clean. You can buy them on the Baker's Edge website as well as at Amazon.
I took a picture of it with the brownie pan to show the difference in sizes:
(p.s. I do know about the three channel lasagna pan but I like that the Baker's Edge pan allows the sauce to flow from one side of the pan to the other.)
* (Disclosure: it was free, I did not request it.)
· comments [17] · 10-21-2009 · categories:food ·
· comments [2] · 10-12-2009 · categories:food · links ·
I'm seeking out waffles in Seattle. I want to find a few examples of good, or correct, texture, in this case the toppings are not important. Here's why: we were given an expensive waffle maker recently and after using it a few times I'm fairly convinced it doesn't actually work that well. But, before I condemn it I'd like to have an ideal waffle texture to compare, a control group if you will.
Here is what I have so far:
- Arosa in First Hill, according to Yelp Hans came out of retirement to serve snack waffles once again.
- Rusty Pelican in Wallingford, a few steps away from my first house in Seattle.
- Vera's in Ballard.
I've also dug up this list at Seattlest and this one from Yelp. I've never heard of Walter's Waffles and wonder if it (still? actually? exists. And I'll be sure to visit Sweet Iron Waffles this Autumn -- "Introducing the Liége Waffle, a sumptuous combination of brioche style dough, pearl sugar and the perfect iron to seal the authenticity of this treat." Yum.
But I'm hoping to get a first person recommendation for a solid example of a good waffle, got one?
· comments [41] · 09-29-2009 · categories:food · seattle ·
· comments [6] · 09-24-2009 · categories:food · links ·
Here are the pies entered into the recent Pie Off at Curio Confections here in Seattle. They were all delicious and judging was tough. I was honored to be asked to be a judge along Jessie from Cake Spy and Ashely from Not Without Salt. Thanks go to Maria for such a great event!
(The two images above are two parts of a sweet potato avant garde pie with caramel sauce.)
Let's take another look at that lattice, shall we?
· comments [19] · 09-23-2009 · categories:food ·
