Surfboard Cake

I made this for my daughter's Hawaiian-themed birthday party. I traced a hibiscus die cut onto fondant to make the flower shapes on the board. It went nicely with the shave ice.

The Dowager Caketess

Made this for my wife's birthday. Please forgive me, Maggie Smith.

The Wii Cake

Model in foreground.

I tried a new type of fondant called Choco-Pan -- a combination of buttercream and white chocolate. A bit pricey, and difficult to soften up at first, but after that it handled very nicely, and tasted much better than other fondants. Recommended.

Yippee ki yay, Momofuku

I'm currently attempting to make the Corn Flake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies from the Momofuku Milk Bar's cookbook. I have to say, this is a somewhat frustrating cookbook. If you're unfamiliar with it, the Momofuku Milk Bar is a series of restaurants in New York City specializing in high-end desserts made from surprisingly pedestrian ingredients. These cookies, for example, contain Corn Flakes, powdered milk, mini-marshmallows... probably stuff you have in your pantry but never thought to put in cookies. Oh, and tons and tons of butter. But don't let the low-end ingredients fool you; the author, Christina Tosi, has a lot of fancy techniques she insists are essential (creaming butter and sugar for eight minutes, using a paddle and stand mixer rather than a hand mixer, forming the cookie dough on a tray and refrigerating it for hours, etc.). And the dishes are shockingly labor-intensive.

The book seems to assume that the reader has some familiarity with the dishes at the restaurant. There are not a lot of illustrations telling the reader, say, what the final product should look like. Anyway, I followed the cookie recipe precisely and came up with this:

That just can't be right. And it was pretty frustrating, since I started with what was easily the best cookie dough I'd ever tasted. I tried several times and couldn't help coming up with enormous, flat cookies. I found this variation of the recipe online and followed the suggestion of freezing the dough, thinking the fridge wasn't cool enough for the cookies to hold their shape. Nope. I'm not sure what shape they're supposed to be in, but I'm pretty sure it's not the one I've got.

After a little experimentation, I've lowered the temperature to 350F, cut each dough ball in half (the original recipe called for scooping them in a 1/3 cup measure), and reduced the cooking time from 18 to 11 minutes. I tried cooking them on a baking stone, but as you really need to have them cool before removing them from the tray, the Silpat seems to work a lot better. Here's what I've got now:

Again, given the thinness, they're still coming out more like lace cookies, but the flavor is quite good. I don't know why my cookies won't hold their shape (whatever that shape is supposed to be) -- whether I failed to whip the butter properly, whether it's an altitude thing, or what. But still, yummy.

I've also made the Crack Pie and will serve it to my guests tonight. More details later when I find out how it came out.


Update: The Crack Pie was a hit. Tastes like pecan pie without the pecans.

That's no moon... it's a pumpkin

My first attempt at a Death Star Jack-o-Lantern.

You are my density

My son's entry in the Denver Post's Peeps contest -- "Peep to the Future" -- didn't win or even place. But it did get posted on the Post's website, which made his day.

Little Cake on the Prairie

At my daughter's request. The log cabin and corral are made from pretzels. The crops (asparagus?) are cut strips of green licorice. Chocolate buttercream frosting served as cement and soil for the crops. The cows are made of sugar. Basically, everything's edible except the horses, the tree, Jack the dog, and Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" Laura Ingalls.

The clapboard cake

I made this for my son's movie-themed birthday party this past weekend. Yellow cake covered with black (store-purchased) fondant.

Seth as Cake

This is apparently what my kids think I look like. They made this cake for my birthday (with some help from Aunt Nora.)

You know Comet and Cupid and Donner and Nixon...

The Nixon reindeer cookie.

Remember: when Santa does it, that means it's not illegal.

The Pi-rate Cake

Sherry Zaks is on fire.  I only wish I'd done this one:

Baby shower cake

For the record, the animals are happy, not hungry.

The most polarized cake in America

I went to the UC Davis Political Science Department today to give a talk, only to find that my confectionary arch-nemesis/mentor Sherry Zaks had provided the refreshments.  I can really think of no greater honor than this delectable doppelgänger.

The Ballet Star Cake

I made this one for my daughter's fifth birthday.  The basic design comes from Lindy Smith's book.  The pleated skirt is my favorite part.

The edible King Keohane and Verba

My arch-nemesis is at it again.  Sherry Zaks, who has previously created a heteroskedasticity cake, has now baked a pastry version of King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry:

This will not stand.