Why Nothing Can Ever Be Simple

[I want everyone to know that I had this completely written out and the save button lied, so all my clever quips had to be replaced by not so clever quips.  Creativity can run out.  And what's there now is nothing like what I wrote the first time.  That is all.]

Remember the witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel?  She lured them to her gingerbread house, stuffed them with sweets until they were fattened, them cooked them up and ate them.  This past Halloween, I was that witch.  It's what happens when a baker celebrates Halloween.

I made three kinds of cookies: gingerbread, chocolate, and basic sugar cookies.  All accounted for, this meant about a hundred cookies, the preparing of which was spread out over a few nights.  Decorating them took over four hours on its own.  Was it worth it?  You tell me.

I didn't really have Halloween-y cutters.  I had a few animals, some tools, ninjas, and a mustache.  Mom sent me some ghosts and a wolf/cat/bear cutter just in the nick of time.  (Thanks, Mom!)  There had to be a way to make these sufficiently Halloween-y.  These are some of my "normal" attempts.  

...eh.  Pretty basic.  With a hundredish cookies, sometimes you have to be.  But I'm not a simple person.  I have to do things differently.  Or something.  These were just too cute.  I like puppies just as much as the next person, more so, even, but with something as tempting as animal cookies for Halloween, I can't just leave them so...ordinary.  I tried to be good.  I tried to be normal.  Instead, I got creative.  My macabre side (which isn't very hidden) came out in full.  I worried about what my roommates would think.

I also worried if I might be excommunicated or reported to the proper authorities.  Is this normal?  The frog is practically vomiting gore.  Those tools were clearly weapons of murder.  The butterfly is made of anatomically-correct bloody phalanges.  (Not the one in the picture--a different one.)  The cow is a carcass.  The chicken will feast on your soul.  There was another certain cookie, but it was too bad for even me, and I had it taken care of promptly.

I have to wonder about my sanity sometimes.  Do I have too much fun?  I once made a Christmas cookie look like Frankenstein's monster.  A Christmas cookie.  It was a basic pine tree, but with a bloody gash held together by sprinkle stitches.

I suppose it's time to admit I have a problem.  A delicious, high-calorie problem.  And I enjoy every minute of it.

P.S.  Ignore the unfortunate ghost at the bottom of the picture.  Sometimes cheap-o plastic baggies just can't handle piping.

Satan's Spawn: Round 2

http://culinaryalchemist.blogspot.com/2008/07/bakespace-challenge-2.html

Uh oh...

Why I Am Satan's Spawn

     The eye doctor (may he be chopped into pieces and thrown into a fire fueled by his own blood) cancelled my appointment today, delaying the possible prescription of nerd glasses, so I figured I'd take this extra time to share some of my recent activities.

     

     There are times in life where you try something and you fail at it.  Miserably.  I am no exception to this pattern.  One such occurrence occurred in the form of fudge.  I was home for a short time, an hour or two, and with the mother unit out of the house I was free to be as evil as I wished.  And I wished to make fudge.

     But the fudge didn't wish to be made.  Things went wrong from the beginning.  I needed evaporated milk, and couldn't find any, but after an extensive googling period I found that heavy whipping cream could (probably) be substituted for it.  With nothing to lose, I went ahead and added it...through a strainer.  It wasn't supposed to go bad yet, but there was a thick layer of yucky milky muck lining the inside of the carton.  I took my chances (and didn't tell anyone about it).  Hey, I strained it!  Following the cream problems, it turned out that the pot I was using, a 3 1/2 quart pot, half a quart larger than the recipe suggested, was far too small for the bubbling brew that threatened menacingly to spew forth from its cauldron.  I was forced to turn down the flame, as no amount of stirring could keep the monster back, thus preventing it from completely reaching the desired 236 degree temperature.  I went ahead and added the remaining ingredients regardless, because that mercury wasn't going any higher.  After pouring it in the pan, I licked the spoon, and although I burned my tongue, it tasted alright, so I burned my tongue a few more times.  

     And that was it.  It tasted alright.  It didn't look alright.  After hours sitting on a cooling rack, the fudge had the consistency of pudding.  I started trying to remove perfectly square pieces with a small cookie spatula and ended up spooning lumpy dollops onto a plate.  Not what I was going for.  A night in the refrigerator hardened everything up, but I still felt like the fudge was a failure.  I had to try again, had to get it right.  I had to get it perfect.

     About a week later, I was going to see a friend of mine after a long-time-no-see, and we agreed to exchange goodies.  I thought it'd be a good opportunity to try the fudge again.  Her allergy to nuts made it even more appealing to go for it.  (I'm not much of a nut fan.)

     This time I was going to do it right.  A visit to the grocery store got me the holy evaporated milk, and I switched to a larger, wider pot, with a roomy 5 1/2 quart bowl.  I was going to beat this fudge.  Pun intended.

     Everything seemed to look better, even smell better.  I turned the burner about as high as I could stand to get the temperature high enough, fearing a possible overflow, but the bubbling stayed where it was supposed to.  Pouring it into the pan to harden, it tasted pretty much the same as before, but I definitely burned my tongue more.  Then the moment of truth came.  Still slightly warm on the bottom, but it had definitely solidified into a glorious, swirly slab of irresistible chocolate fudge.  Here, take a look.

Jealous?

     I couldn't get it out by inverting the pan as would have been simply marvelous, but cutting pieces out worked just fine.  I cut them into little cubes that would fit into mini-muffin papers and fit 24 of them into a re-used tissue-lined box from a certain confection shop in Pennsylvania.  Check it out.

Cute, no?  I could do this for a living.

Here you can see the (Valentine's Day themed) paper cradle.   It matched the box.

     I really hope I don't get any flack about showing the box, but I won't know if I did something wrong unless someone complains, right?  And yes, that's my name on the box.  The same name as the (Greek) company.  Thought it might add a little charm.

     So, I've conquered Wonka's nightmare, at least the beginning of it.  The boss level comes when you start gettin' fancy with the flavors and colors.  And I don't think grit alone will be enough for that challenge.