Right before I left for Christmas break, my boyfriend and I watched a Food Network show about a company known for its pre-decorated gingerbread houses, and all we could talk about was how badly we wanted to rip the roof off of one of those things and go to town on it with our teeth.
Well, while we were in an-unnamed-discount-store-that’s-taking-over-the-world in December, my best friend, Tracey, and I spotted shelves loaded with gingerbread house kits for only $10 and decided to go for it, not only to make my boyfriend jealous but as an added benefit.
We imagined how hard it’d be to attach the roof to the sides, to keep ourselves from crushing the soft gingerbread underneath the weight of our decorations. What we didn’t find out until we got back to Tracey’s house and took the thing out of the box was that it was preassembled and hard as a rock. But hey, we’re lazy.
Can you imagine how great it is having the job of putting this thing together? Whoever it is obviously doesn’t have to be concerned with neatness, and I fantasize daily about slopping icing onto giant cookies.
The house came packaged with icing mix, hard candy balls, and spearmint leaves. Tracey added the orange slices because we’re gluttons.
Here’s Tracey making a wreath on the front of the house with the bowl of icing beside her. Mixing the icing powder into water was literally the only thing we had to do before we started decorating. You’ll note the giant K on the side of the roof, which I put there, because I’m narcissistic and also uncreative.
The finished product, with Tracey’s Christmas tree in the background to prove that we actually did do this in December and not just last week. Unless Tracey kept her Christmas tree up until March just in case we ever found a gingerbread house kit on super-clearance, which is quite possible.
Beauty shot! You’ll note the fine reindeer-covered fleece blanket Tracey held up as a backdrop for me.
Tracey posed for this picture in which she was pretending to go at the house with a spoon before we figured out that it required a hammer to actually break through any of the gingerbread.
Hard as it was, though, that shit was 4 realz delicious.
My office ordered two king cakes last week under the guise of needing them for a co-worker’s going-away party but actually because I’ve always wanted to try them. The first king cakes were introduced to the southern U.S. by French and Spanish settlers and were originally associated with Christmas but are now traditional in Mardi Gras celebrations. Which makes sense, considering how indulgent they are.
A southern co-worker recommended Paul’s Pastry Shop as the source for an authentic king cake, and the going-away girl choose a lemon over cream cheese and a chocolate Bavarian. I spent the week before they arrived telling everyone we were going to have cake made of baby, because a tiny plastic doll is stuck into the cake post-baking and is said to provide good luck to whoever finds it in their slice.
When we opened up the cake box, we thought it was a lump of unbaked dough, but it turns out that an undecorated king cake is just sort of ugly. Luckily, bags of icing and sprinkles were provided, along with Mardi Gras beads to use as payment for boob-baring. Or, since my office is full of men, manboob-baring.
Ash goes for decorative swirls, but we figure out later that Jeff’s way of just slopping it on in a straight line makes for better coverage and easier hand-spreading.
Nik, it turns out, has no future in cake-decorating.
The finished product!
Dripping with icing and caked in layers of sprinkles, it was a diabetic’s worst nightmare. The cake itself was mostly a thick, sweet bread with the tiniest layer of lemon preserves or chocolate spread and a layer of cream cheese baked into it, and it was good, but it wasn’t the sort of super-moist cake we usually go for in the U.S.
The best part was the way the icing collected in pools around the edges of the pan and began to harden. Some people acted grossed out when I spooned the extra icing onto slices of the cake, and those people are no longer my friends.
It was clear to Jack in slicing the first cake which piece the baby was in, so of course he took that piece for himself.
After licking the baby clean, Jack threw his away, but
Steve, who found the baby in the second cake, proved to be a doting caregiver.
Happy Fat Tuesday!
When it comes to candy, the Japanese really know how to name their products for maximum American kitsch appeal:
Note that I found this on the same day I bought the bacon-flavored jellybeans from the SoHo Pearl River location, because the Japanese also know how I love to eat fattening foods but am too lazy to grill up some actual bacon.
The Crunky bars were like Kit Kats but less dense and less sweet, which is basically how all Japanese candy is in my experience. Which is why I’m never leaving the U.S. for it, despite the number of karaoke joints there.
I figured it was too late to post about my first bûche de Noël experience before I left NYC to spend the holidays with my family in Ohio, but since Blondie & Brownie revealed that Financier is still selling them, it looks like I’m good to go.
Being from the Midwest and being very much culturally sheltered, I had no idea what a bûche de Noël was until my office decided on a whim to order a couple of cakes from the downtown Financier Patisserie the week before Christmas. When I called at 3 p.m., the order-taker told me that they were down to a couple of roll cakes, one in white chocolate and one in Grand Marnier. I told her I’d take them, but she kept stressing that these were not normal cakes and kept asking if I was sure I wanted them. I was like, “Lady, cake is cake.”
But no! A traditional bûche de Noël is a French sponge cake rolled up with frosting to resemble a log, complete with buttercream bark, meringue mushrooms, and protruding branches (made of chocolate, in this case). The Grand Marnier version was entirely untraditional, but the mound of berry-flavored mousse was no less delicious.
I usually think Financier’s cakes are too light and fluffy to really count as a decadent dessert (because I’m a glutton), but the yule log was a total exception and one that I’ll look forward to next year. It seems like the woman at Financier shouldn’t have been warning me about the cake but should’ve been asking why I wasn’t buying all three.
Is this something normal, non-Midwestern people often eat for Christmas?
When I was home in Ohio last week for Thanksgiving, I found myself not having eaten for 20 whole minutes and went rooting through my best friend’s pantry for something to snack on. This is what I found:
She claims this is completely normal thing that completely normal people buy and eat and that it’s totally worth the 2000% markup from what you’d pay for a whole bag of them just to have your potato pre-washed. Another friend tells me that the Easy-Baker comes out of the microwave super-soft and ready for mashing on your plate with some butter.
I think they’re crazy, but I still love the lengths we go to for laziness.
I grew up ten minutes from Circleville, Ohio, and have such fond memories of going to the Circleville Pumpkin Show as a kid that flying home to Ohio from NYC every year for it just seems natural. And I’m not alone in my venture: millions of people come from all over to world simply to visit “the best free show on Earth”. My friends and I are pretty up front about the fact that there’s nothing to do at the Pumpkin Show but eat. Luckily, we don’t need another reason to go.
This year’s feast included:
The Bloomin’ Potato, which is such a favourite for my best friend, Tracey, that we walked around aimlessly in the cold for . . . at least ten whole minutes until we found it. It’s a spiral-cut potato fried into a chip-like state, covered in nacho cheese, bacon, and green onion. Because of the spiral cut, the chips are all stuck together, so if you share a plate with friends as I did, you can get away with taking a whole string of the most topping-laden chips.
A sprinkle-soaked candy apple. I had never had a candy apple in my life, believe it or not, because caramel apples have always appealed to me so much more. I was set on a caramel apple but got talked into a candy apple at the last moment by Tracey and didn’t regret it for a second. The red candy dripped all over our hands and fingers, and the sprinkles fell off all over my lap. I felt like a child.
Wisconsin cheddar, deep fried. It was hard to taste the cheese because there was so little of it and so much breading, but I’m not complaining.
Baby Simon was less than thrilled with Jeff’s offer of a taste of pumpkin whoopie pie, which was basically a sandwich made of two pumpkin muffin tops and a flavorful whipped cream. Tracey and I, however, consumed several of them and were delighted.
Frozen cheesecake, plopped on a stick and dunked in chocolate, is everything you imagine it to be.
This mess was a crepe with a creamy pumpkin pie filling, covered in praline sauce, topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with candy corn and candy pumpkins.
The famous pumpkin burger, which always has a line ten-people deep, even in the breakfast hours. It’s a sloppy joe with pumpkin and pumpkin-pie-related spices such as nutmeg added in. It honestly doesn’t taste much at all like pumpkin, but it tastes like sloppy joe, and that’s what I care about.
I’m of course leaving out all of the fried cheese on a stick, all of the apple cider slushies, all of the pumpkin milkshakes, and so on and so on, but I was too busy stuffing my face half of the time to remember to take photos. Which is how it should be.
If you, like me, are saddened by your ability to only purchase egg nog one month out of the year, this is your lucky day. After seeing less apathy more cake’s photo of it on Chains of Love, I decided I probably couldn’t survive the week without tasting Burger King’s new Cupcake Sundae Shake.
I first tried the BK website, which doesn’t list it on the nutritional information with the other desserts. I then called the BK around the corner from my office, which didn’t pick up their phone. Finally, I spoke to a representative at BK headquarters, who helpfully informed me that it’s a national item that should be available at every location.
On Friday afternoon, some brave co-workers and I ventured out to the BK–which I had never been in up to this point but will now be visiting afternoonly–and to my surprise, actually found a whole sign for it showcased on the menu. New York City, unlike cities in my home state of Ohio, doesn’t seem to be a test market for anything, so whenever I hear about something awesome available in other states, I assume I’ll be able to find it in NYC in 6 months to never.
The only sizes were small and medium, which was a huge disappointment, because although I would’ve never ordered the large or extra-large, it’s important to me that gluttony is at my fingertips if I desire it. I requested the medium, but the cashier informed me only a small was available. And then promptly charged me for the medium, anyway.
It turns out that Burger King’s small is everyone else’s large–which I would’ve known was I a dedicated fast food eater like I should be–so it was perfect. The shake was yellow to accentuate the fact that it’s supposed to taste like yellow cake and had what I thought was an undersized dollop of whipped cream and a pathetic smattering of sprinkles on top.
It turns out that the whipped cream is so dense that it actually sinks into the shake. Even I, a person who claims no amount of sweetness is too intense, thought I could’ve been overwhelmed had there been more. It was like icing and was definitely the best part of the dessert.
The shake tasted really familiar to me, but I couldn’t decide why until I told my co-worker Steve that it was “eggy somehow”, and he asked, “Like egg nog?”
OH, CRAP. Life could not get any better.
“Variety” is reporting that a new “Top Chef” spinoff called “Just Desserts” is casting this week. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?
• No more chefs complaining that they “don’t do desserts”. • No more effing scallops in every. single. appetizer. • No more chefs choosing to serve a three-course menu without a single dessert in sight because they don’t want to screw it up and get sent home. • No more Padma saying that everything is too sweet, because you know they’ll actually get some judges who aren’t afraid of contracting the sugarbetes. • No more chefs coming with one practiced dessert up their sleeves that they continue to serve for every challenge that calls for something sweet.
I could not be more excited.
I didn’t love the pretzel croissant. It has its own website. People who care about food gush about it. But I was unimpressed.
It was flaky, buttery, light, and bread-flavoured, which are all of the things a croissant should be. So maybe the problem is that I like pretzels much more than I like croissants, and this was no pretzel. There was no thick pretzel skin, no dense pretzel insides, and no salt in sight, let alone the chunks of crystals I want to see.
But it was a good croissant, and I was still finding butter flavor trapped in between my fingers for hours after eating it. Don’t ask why I was licking between my fingers for hours.
I know there are a lot of Max Brenner haters out there. I agree that their menu full of quotes from some bald dude likening eating chocolate to lovemaking is pretty laughable (and sorta gross before dinner), and I agree that waiting in line for an hour with all of the tourists sucks when you feel like you should be entitled to special treatment as someone who pays $2,000 in rent to actually live in the city. But I still crave it.
My friend Beth and I ate at the one in Union Square a few weeks ago and were full enough from our large dinner portions that we were unsure we were able to pack in dessert, but dessert is the whole point of Max Brenner, so we decided to share the Gooey Marshmallow Fudge Brownie Fluffernutter Ice Cream Sandwich. Ridiculous name, right? But I guess it’s polite to let your customers know exactly what they’re in for.
The photo doesn’t do it justice, but the description sure does:
Deep chocolate peanut butter ice cream, marshmallow fluff in between the famous Max Brenner “Oh My God” very chocolately soft baked cookie, with extra milk chocolate drizzle. Served with warm peanut butter dip.
That’s right. Peanut butter dip. Not baby poo.
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get anything but the fondue (served with milk, dark, and white chocolates heated over candles!), but those fudgey cookies can’t be beat. The crunchy crumbles added great texture, and the peanut butter sauce was so good that I cleaned the bowl while Beth was in the restroom. Mwahaha.
