Showing posts with label eggplant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eggplant. Show all posts

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Meat cake


It's meat cake day! No winter birthday celebration is complete without a layer cake in meat form. I formed the patties with a divot in the center, so when meat cake puffs up in the oven, we will end up a flatter top instead of the usual dome that would need to be trimmed off for cake duty.


Ta Da! Meat Cake. Frosted with mashed potatoes. With bacon roses. Thank you sous chef MK for wonderful chopping and shopping skills.


We would have encountered fewer structural issues had we used instant mashed potatoes and a more traditional dry meat loaf recipe. But we wanted a tasty moist meat cake instead of 15 pounds of novelty meat brick. A turkey and mushroom layer on top, a roasted veggie beef layer on bottom. And instead of the usual ketchup, there's a sun dried tomato and olive pesto in between the layers. Delicious meat cake.


And that's not all. Fish in cake form.


And veggie cake. Eggplant and squash with 3 kinds of puree filling. Sweet potato, celeriac, and garlic russet potato. Topped with a parmesan crisp.


And mushroom cake. (I know. stretching it. turn your head sideways.)


And butter in cake form. Thank you Stuart for assorted sodas that don't taste like sodas. Such flavors as cucumber and rose petals and espresso.


Somebody ate a mouthful of butter thinking it was cake! Ha!


Fudgie the Whale Carvel cake makes an appearance. Ice cream in cake form! The fluke and blow hole was especially delicious.



And to finish up Winter Birthday Celebration 2008, Megan brings red velvet cupcakes in entree form. Go Megan! The butter is a starburst candy.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Assembly required


Ramen schmamen. For not much more time to make a 15 cent bag of cheap ramen, a bowl of udon noodles with assorted items can fill your belly. All the bits and doodads are either pre-cooked or take only seconds to be ready. Just boil everything in broth and in a shake and a shimmy, you have supper.


Celery root (celeriac) is one of my favorite vegetables (and also hideously ugly.) It's the Gerard Depardieu of the root vegetable world. People think I'm crazy because I leap for joy whenever I see one of these celeriac monstrosities at the market. We will be blitzing these with butter and a sploosh of half and half.


Salting veggies does many things. Goodbye sponginess and waterlogged flavors.



And some pre-party assembly means extra opportunities to procrastinate tomorrow. We'll put on the last two layers and heat these up tomorrow. If I wasn't so lazy and easily distracted, I'd make a good caterer.