beautiful inedibles

There are (at least) two kinds of people. The first kind starts a book (or movie, or relationship, article, book project, or even a meal--really, choose what you will) only to find it really sucks. I mean, really sucks. But they keep with it anyway, because they can't bear the thought of not finishing what they started.  The other kind of person quickly cuts his/her losses and moves on to the next (hopefully better) kind of thing. 

I am (too often) the first kind. Meet my beautiful inedible. 

 

A bit of background: I’m currently working on a book project focused on the rhetorical dimensions of what Sherrie Inness terms “kitchen culture”—the various discourses about food, cooking, and gender roles that stem from the kitchen but that pervade our society on many levels.” (3).

Beyond being interested in the persuasive potentials of food, I am particularly interested in the way food might be used to inform, instruct, introduce, map, to navigate, memorialize, motivate, enact, ritualize, destabilize, connect, divide, and how it might serve as an opportunity for inspiration, fantasy, escape, creativity, play, and artistic expression.  In short, I am interested in the complex, highly-distributed, embodied, and performative aspects of what I’m calling an edible rhetoric. 

To better understand the various ways people use food (and vice versa), I began looking at cookbooks and advice manuals published between 1930-1978. More recently, I've begun examining more current/contemporary texts and forums--cooking blogs, YouTube videos, discussion forums, etc.  And soon, as the third and final component of this research, I will begin interviewing people about their experiences and histories with, and memories of, cooking/baking. 

  

Because I feel strongly about the importance of living the research--that is to say, in keeping with food scholars like Lisa Heldke, I think it's important that those who think and/or write about food are also actually doing food,  I will, every now and then, take the time to make something (most often a baked good) I find in the older cookbooks or online. Almost without fail, the recipes in the older cookbooks are successful and delicious. Almost without fail, the newer recipes are. . .well, not quite as delicious. 

Case in point--today's effort. A piece I'm calling, simply and deservedly, "my beautiful inedible." 

  

Like the first sort of person described to start, I knew, almost from the get-go, that this pecan pie cake was not going to be good. It was my first time making swiss buttercream and while my meringue-making skills were pretty much on point (this, thanks largely to the past month and a half I spent obsessively making macarons--the kicker is I don't even like macarons, but that mattered less than the fact that I'd committed to them), I hadn't really anticipated the butter part and its impact on my feelings toward this cake. Again, my brown sugar meringue was (I thought) pretty much on point. Case in point: 

 

But then I added the butter. So. much. butter. Ewww. In fairness, the recipe warned that not everyone is a fan of butter. that. much. butter. Again, in fairness, I think the swiss buttercream was doing and being exactly who it was supposed to be, it just wasn't my cup of tea. But, still, I persisted.

Step two: making the pecan pie filling. I didn't have the best feeling when the recipe called for cornstarch, but I'm nothing if not obedient. (Add to this the fact that I'm not nearly skilled enough--nor will I ever likely be--in the science of baking to feel comfortable improvising my way around a discomfort like this.) The filling looked okayish when it was still warm, but when I engaged with it a couple hours later, it looked like refried beans. You'd think it was refried beans, but the wiggly kind of refried beans.

Given that I was (not counting glazing the nuts for the top and/or decorating the cake) about 2/3 of the way done and so very much committed to seeing this through, I made the layer cakes. And this went well--I baked up some nice even layers. 

I went on to construct the cake, opting to use a can of store-bought white icing instead of the swiss buttercream for the outside of the cake, hoping that I could have one tasty element (not counting the glazed pecans or the cake itself) associated with this cake. I knew that I'd be using the swiss buttercream for the top of the cake (I was really happy with the color and texture--it was just the butterbomb taste that was off-putting), but figured that I could easily enough scrape that off if I had a piece. (The tougher part, I knew, would be scraping out the gelatinous pecan pie filling between the layers.)  Luckily for me, my dog, Jerome, made sure that I wouldn't have to go to all this trouble to enjoy a piece of cake that I'd likely not enjoy. But I've gotten ahead of myself. 

But since I'm already pretty much there, here it is: I'd just finished taking photos of my beautiful inedible when the phone rang. Realizing that I had left my beautiful inedible unattended, Jerome quickly helped himself to one side of the cake. [Interestingly enough, like me, he seemed to enjoy the store-bought white icing more than the swiss buttercream, since he pretty much left the sbc untouched.] 

Prior to the phone ringing, I had been on the fence about whether to not to just trash the cake. Actually, I'd considered cutting my losses much earlier in the process--first, when I tasted a bit of the sbc and, then again, when I saw how grossly the pecan pie filling had set up. I suppose I kept with it because the payoff, for me, is always with the decorating. If I could make something look good (even if it didn't taste good or the texture was off), I'd have some small sense of accomplishment. And I'd have had another opportunity to practice something I enjoy doing and something at which I am always hoping to get better. 

And here is where baking is so much like writing. Or maybe where it's not so much like writing, but should be. With baking I think I'm still too much of the mindset that all the time and effort should result with a tangible, shareable (and hopefully, delicious) thing. That if it doesn't, why bother? With writing (or video-making) I guess I bother mostly to learn more what I'm capable of doing--and what I am not capable of, what doesn't work, and to imagine what could work better, differently. It's tempting, I think, for me to see this cake as a failure. A waste of time and resources. Yet if I assume more of my writer's mindset, I can begin to reflect on what this cake helped me to better understand, to know, to experience, or to imagine doing differently next time--like to trust my gut when it comes to cornstarch, to know that I'm able to successfully make sbc or glazed pecans or pipe a fairly smooth rope border. And to know that I do not care for sbc and will not likely make it again. 

Unless, of course, one of the recipes in the older cookbooks invites me to do so. 

a month (or more) of macarons

I've been making macarons for about a month and a half now--and here's the kicker. I don't really even like them--the taste, the way they look. (too sugary, boring. I'd rather eat and look at pizza.) Part of me wonders if my struggles with macarons are a result of not liking them, like maybe they sensed this?

I got into this because I wanted a challenge (and a challenge it has certainly been) and because I happened upon this recipe. Insofar as anything maple serves as a kind of gateway drug for me, I figured this would be the best (and most delicious) place to start. NOTE: I've attempted this recipe a half dozen times and have never been able to get my meringue to the consistency shown in the images here. The macarons still came out (although they weren't pretty--a little too wrinkly on top) and tasted fine, it's just that nothing in my process ended up looking the way things did for the original poster.

I was planning on this being a one and done kind of hobby, but this recipe led to others and then still other recipes and methods--Italian led to French and then to Swiss, and then back again to Italian. I think I've tried almost every recipe and method out there at this point.

My experience with macarons has been hit or miss, mostly miss. It seems I can produce a full mac if I don't mind them having weak and wrinkly tops OR I can produce a great looking mac with a strong and shiny top shell, but the tradeoff is often having to deal with hollows. Ah, those dreaded hollows--some of which are diminished when the macs are filled and matured, others never go away.

In late December, my macaron-making happened to overlap (however briefly) with my sugar cookie-making and I started wondering about applying some wet-on-wet royal icing techniques to the macarons. If I could do this with cookies, why not with macarons? At least I could make macarons that were (at least to my eye) a little more interesting.

I knew that many were applying color, texture and/or design to their plain macaron shells post-bake, but I wanted to find a way to do the design pre-bake, at the batter stage. As powerful a motivator as maple is for me, leopard print is even stronger. And so, my goal was to make leopard print macarons. After this, I promised myself, I'd stop making macarons (and that was almost a month ago).

I made this how-to video for one of my macaron groups, showing how I've adapted for macarons the wet-on-wet royal icing technique, but since making that video, I've begun to experiment with other colors, designs, and shapes. A small sampling:  

 

And, continuing on with the Boston Terrier theme, perhaps my favorite macs to date--inspired by a dollar thrift store painting we bought seven or eight years ago.

In a nutshell, my attitude toward macarons was (and still is) this: If I could do it (had done it) with royal iced sugar cookies, why not try it with macarons? And so doing this:

 
Naturally meant trying this:

Another valuable cheat/lesson I've learned along the way--best way to make the best of the ugliness of a wrinkly top? Dip 'em in chocolate.