bitterbutton

a few months back, a good friend of mine had a dream she went out on a date with dean cain.  in the middle of the dream date, dean cain’s head turned into a lemon tart.  and then she ate it. 

dreams like that are special and hilarious and need to be commemorated. so i burned dean cain’s image onto a lemon meringue pie with a blow torch.  it was a birthday present. 

but not without help! first, i turned the picture (it was the best google images had to offer. as it turns out, dean cain isn’t so recognizably “dean cain” in silhouette form or without the superman S. who knew?) into a stencil.  i then sweetly asked my husband to cut the stencil out of aluminum, using his company’s CNC router.  then i bought a canister of butane and baked a lemon pie.

torching the image onto the pie was pretty straightforward, although i practiced a bit on an extra batch of meringue.  i needed to perfect my oh-so-artful shadowing. 

in order to keep everything looking good, i did have to figure out a way to prop the stencil just above, but not touching, the pie.  after exhausting my collection of little glass jars and nearly everything else unmeltable in my kitchen, i finally wrapped books in tin foil and stacked them on either side of the pie.  i rested metal skewers on the books, and rested the stencil on top of those.  it worked and nothing was set ablaze.

i can sort of explain the genesis of these cookies, but not exactly.  1) i was trying to think of foods that can be shaped to look like other foods.  like those dessert nachos and edible paper you see everytime there’s a mention of molecular gastronomy in print.  2) i was also thinking of people that spend lots of time making patterned things out of polymer clay. like beads and picture frames.  3) and finally, as always, i was thinking of my favorite craft book of all time: making miniature food and market stalls by angie scarr.

 + +  =

i made two batches of green tea shortbread (basically following this recipe, except i used coconut extract instead of almond), but added half as much matcha to one batch as i did the other.  this made for two distinctly different shades of green dough.  i bought the matcha in a japanese food store, and i did catch a snippet of english on the label that said “baking”–but i was surprised at how electric green the dough turned out.  other matcha projects have been less vibrant, but still as awesome.

i rolled the light green dough into a cylinder and the darker dough into an 1/8in. sheet.  the dark green dough was rolled around the cylinder and trimmed.  i rolled this new combo-cylinder in sanding sugar, to offset any bitterness the tea might have caused. i sliced it into 1/8-1/4 in. rounds, topped the cookies with sesame seeds and baked in a 325 degree oven until they were done.  and cucumbers were born!

these were a fortunate accident. i was trying to do something completely different, involving both sugar cookie and chocolate cookie dough, and smashed the two doughs together after getting annoyed.  my temper tantrum just happened to create a nice marbled dough the exact color of an airedale terrier.

(image courtesy of the airedale terrier club of canada)

a paying catering job!

i filled tiny cookie jars with tiny (homemade) cookies–and used those as a business card.

and made sandwiches and cookies.

and arranged a platter of tiny fruits (lady apples, mini pears, and little bananas).

and put fresh herbs in amongst the chips.

and made decorative toothpicks for the sandwiches with my own bare hands.

the menu:

• roast beef with caramelized onions, arugula, and lemon-basil aioli on ciabatta
• tuna with black olive dressing, hardboiled eggs and blanched snowpeas on baguette
• smoked turkey and white cheddar with cranberry mustard on sourdough
• tomato, avocado and swiss with cilantro-lime dressing, on whole wheat
• sesame peanut cookies
• dulce de leche rice krispie treats
• homemade “oreos”–crisp chocolate cookie with lemon/white chocolate filling

and all went according to plan:

two things:

1) if ever i were to be encapsulated in a cookie vingette, it would probably look like this picture.  it’s all there–forest creatures, ruled notebook paper, tiny things, and sugar, fat and flour.

2) about 3 or 4 months ago, i was waiting in line for a cup of coffee.  and was, as i’m apt to do, thinking about cookies.  and i decided that i wanted a cookie spoon.  and then spent some time trying to invent strategies on how to make one (my personal favorite crackpot idea:  shaping biscotti dough into the shape of a spoon, for the first stage of baking.  then slicing off spoons like a lumberjack for the second stage.  and i eventually decided on the obvious and easy solution–i bought a spoon-shaped mold on the internet.  however when i was in line, i was so amped about the spoon that i sent my first and only text to myself–”cookie spoons and coral meringue.”  and now i can check one of those off.

incidentally, that’s ceramic notebook paper! fishs eddy, one of my favorite places to covet placesettings ever, has these amazing platters shaped like paper:

after visiting them a dozen times at the store, i finally caved and bought one.  and it rules. ha. a pun.

roll-out peanut butter cookies!  i used this recipe and added a little nutmeg and cardamom to the dough.  the recipe calls for cornstarch to be used in place of a small amount of flour–i’m assuming it helps absorb some of the oiliness of the peanut butter and makes a more tender roll-out dough.

i topped the cookies with white and black sesame seeds before baking; they added a different level of nuttiness and went really well with all the spices. 

i love the hot pink nonpareils as an accent to the natural look of the sesame seeds. 

yeah, i did use tweezers to hand-place each sesame seed and hot pink sprinkle.  it didn’t last long.

i bought these cute little molds on sugarcraft.com–they are flexible plastic, and came with a couple of different recipes for cream cheese mints.  my house was cream cheeseless last night, so i just used sugar, water, and food coloring to make some fancy sugarcubes.  after pressing sugar into the mold, i inverted them directly onto a baking sheet.  they dried out in a 200 degree oven for about 15 minutes. 

the real experiment for these?  seeing if adding them to a cup a coffee turns said cup an unappealing color. 

you know–cause traditional rolled truffles are called such because they look like the underground mushroom truffles.  so this is a truffle cut into the shape of a mushroom. ha?

trying to take a picture of powdered sugar with my camera is futile.  it’s just not equipped to capture those subtle nuances.

a little late, but this was valentine’s day:

peanut brownies and cherry truffles.

i liked purposefully plain packaging, and was lucky enough to find kraftpaper boxes that held exactly the amount of treats i wanted.  i used strips of red cotton for a bow, rather than something shiny and satiny.  chocolate for the comrades!

we threw a baby shower at my office and i was in charge of edibles.  the (handmade by a co-worker) invitation featured little sprouting seedlings, so i tried to match the theme with the cupcakes.

chocolate cupcakes with cherry-cream-cheese frosting, topped with crushed cookies and edible flowers.  i even went the extra mile and used chocolate wafer cookies instead of oreos. ha.

cheese rings (!) and curried egg salad sandwiches.  the sandwiches are cut with egg-shaped cutters, and displayed in a nest made of a hollowed out round loaf and radish sprouts.  i was up really late making the sandwich fillings the night before the shower, and making the egg nest was one of those late-night crackpot ideas that actually worked! it was really adorable.

basil/goat cheese tea sandwiches served in a breadbox, with corn relish on the side.  the breadbox was an idea i found in martha stewart’s hors d’oeuvres handbook, a book that is almost overwhelming with ideas for beautiful party displays.  not only did it make a classy sandwich holder, i got to use my electric carving knife to make it!

more delicious cupcakes.  when i ran out of flowers, i used springs of mint–an equally adorable substitute.