A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Happy Halloween '09: Orange Popcorn Balls

Scaring up a bunch of spooky treats, half for our family Halloween party and half to take to work to share with my favorite vampires and ghouls:  Witch's Fingers Pretzel Rods,  Orange Popcorn Balls, and "RIP"  Cookies.

Click below for Popcorn Ball recipe.

And don't forget our Blockbuster Halloween Monster Makin' Contest! Deadline is Sunday night, November 1st so you still have time to help the kids make any kind of monster they want out of movie candy.  Send a picture to me at Marie9949 (at) sbcglobal.net for the chance to win a $25.00 Blockbuster movie gift card.

Halloween! Holli's "Twilight" Birthday Cake

Cake decorating is one of my favorite food arts but because it's so tough on one's hands, I only do it for family these days, specifically for our nieces and nephews. The rule is that for their birthday I'll make anything they want.  One year, Sydney wanted a butterfly. Check.  Boy Jordan wanted an Eric Carr (the fox) from KISS cake. Check.  Girl Jordan wanted a car cake. Check, although it was made from rice krispie treats rather than cake which added to it's value in her eyes.  Holli's birthday falls the week before Halloween so her request was doubly appropriate for both the holiday and the latest vampire craze.  She asked for a Twilight-themed cake.  On the inside is a cherry chip (family favorite) cake torted into five layers with homemade buttercream between each. The covering is black marshmallow fondant (I think it looks like leather).  Everything on the cake is made from sugar with the exceptions of the apple and the ribbon.

Not having read the books, I didn't know what the icons all stand for but Wednesday night at work Carissa and I did a quick google and found that the apple represents man's (and vampires') free agency: the choice between good and evil, innocence and corruption.  The red and white flower is for purity stained by blood.  The chess pieces we found nothing on but it seems pretty obvious that the king represents the vampire and the pawn represents humans in their eyes.

Fun cake. I had a great time putting it together.  Happy Birthday, Holli!

For the recipes and tips on cakes, see my prior cake posts:

Marhsmallow fondant recipe:

http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/day_1_the_cake_.html

Sculpting a truck cake for Isaac and tips on stacking cakes:

http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/day_1_the_cake__1.html

The finished truck cake and Jordan's retro black and white cake:

http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/day_0the_cakes_.html

 

Happy Halloween from Diedre

My friend, Diedre, sent me this pic this morning of the pumpkin cake she made for work today.  Isn't he cute?  Tthe basic idea is two bundt cakes, the bottom one flipped upside down and the other one placed on top of it.  Not sure what she used for the stem but you can either use cake or even a cone of paper, frosted, would suffice for the eyes.  Frosted with a knife to create the pumpkin ridges, the rest of the face is piped on with tubed icing colors you can find at the hobby store.

Thanks Diedre--I bet you're a very popular woman at work today!
 

Halloween: Witch's Fingers Pretzel Rods

Gnarly hag's fingers--the perfect treat for Halloween!

Easy to do, all you need are a couple of items from the cake decorating aisle and time.  The mold and colored almond barks are all made by Wilton, a company that specializes in cake decorating supplies.  You also need pretzel rods, two bags to make the three dozen fingers shown here from 2 bags of green chocolate wafers and one bag of midnight black wafers.  The last ingredient is an evening since you have to melt the chocolate in small amounts, pipe in the fingernail using a snipped end food storage bag, chill, pipe in the finger color and set the pretzel rod in, then chill.  Release from the mold and start all over again.

 

My Nannie's Devilled Eggs

Do have recipes in your recipe box, like me, that have been handed down or that you've been making for so many years that you completely take them for granted and assume that not only does everyone else in the world make the dish but makes it exactly the way you do?  This is one of those for me.  This simple Devilled Egg recipe is exactly the way my mother taught me, and exactly how Nannie taught my mother (and Auntie Miranda).   It's a given at any family gathering at my house.  Our potato salad, Devilled Egg Potato Salad, is very similar to this as well.

The thing that bemuses me, though, is how often I get compliments on the recipe when I make these for friends. Like I said, I take the recipe completely for granted and assume everyone makes them the same way. But apparently not because this is one of those dishes that, without fail, I am asked for the recipe every time I serve it outside of the family. Here it is for all of you who have asked lately that I've said "Oh yeah, I've been meaning to blog that!"

Oktoberfest All Week Long: Sweet Red Cabbage with Cardamom

This dish embodies the smell of Autum for me by combining the comforting fall scents of apples, honey, and cardamom.  The odor of this floating through the house mixed with the smoke from neighborhood fireplaces sneaking in through the one open window in the sunroom gives me a sense of all being right in the world.

Oktoberfest All Week: Jagerschnitzel

One of the things I find most intriguing about exploring culture cooking is that we all eat the same things, we just call them different things and prepare them in slightly different ways.  I'm talking about things like finding out as an adult that the exotic-sounding  polenta is really the cornmeal mush of my youth, or that tonight's Jagerschnitzel is pounded pork chops with delicious mushroom gravy.  I admit the jokester in me sometimes enjoys giving Gene that hour or two of wondering what in the heck we're going to be eating and then seeing the relief in his eyes when the odd sounding "Oktoberfest Jagerschnitzel" meal I made was just his beloved pork chops and mushroom gravy, although really rich gravy since it's made with sour cream instead of just corn starch thickening the pan drippings.

Look For This: FishEx Alaska Seafoods for fantastic Paula Deen Crab Cakes Recipe

Kayla, from Fish Ex, sent down a pound of King Crab legs and a 12 oz reindeer sausage from Alaska today. Let me tell you, that's a fun Fed Ex package to receive. Even the driver was excited. "Is this really seafood from Alaska?"  "Yep."  "Wow, you're so cool!"  Well, good heavens, now I have to order more just so I can feel all cool and full of myself to the Fed Ex drivers! 

Shipped on dry ice, it arrives like it came from next door...and when they read this, I bet the Rileys will wish it had been delivered next door by mistake.

You know, I could go on and on about how nice the crab was and how fun the reindeer sausage tasted but let me just put it this way: It's 7:30pm and I've already made those crab cakes, ate those crab cakes, tasted that reindeer sausage, and placed another order with Fish Ex to be shipped in this Thursday for dry scallops, shrimp, King Crab bisque, and another sausage for the family Halloween party. 

Do I really need to say much more?  Well, you know me.  I will anyway.  After you've checked out the rest of my pics, the Paula Deen recipe I used for the crab cakes, plus my own recipe for Jalapeno Lemon Aioli to top it with, go check out their website for more of the particulars:  www.fishex.com 

As for the order I just placed, the dry scallops are particularly appealing to me because I have thought, for years, that I was a scallop idiot.  I love jumbo scallops in restaurants but each time I've tried my hand at them at home they've always turned out soggy and rubbery.  I thought it was me.  Show of hands--anybody else had that problem? 

It's not us.  It's the scallops. Apparently the restaurant grade scallops are "dry" and the ones sold in the groceries are "wet" with sodium tripolyphosphate (STP) which binds to the protein fibers making the scallops slimey but preserves them so they last days longer in the seafood counter.  Feels like a terrible joke played on the consumer, doesn't it? 

The scallops available through Fish Ex are dry, meaning no chemicals added.  You can read more about it on their web site and there is also a great article in this month's Cooking Illustrated about the difference and how to overcome the STP by brining them in salty lemon water to mask, not remove, the STP.  I'll order the dry, thank you, and avoid the whole chemical quandary.

Now back to the crab....