At first glance, this cake makes no sense whatsoever to you. Probably. Unless you read the blog of one Adam Ellis of the Portland region. He’s got a nice blog, and I think that it would be a good idea for the 8 of you who read this thing regularly to head over there and soak up all the hilarious stories and illustrations. I’m not going to explain the story that inspired this cake, and the reasons are threefold: 1.) more often than not, if you find something you read/saw to be extremely hilarious to the point where you’re doing play-by-plays for anyone who will listen, chances are it will not be nearly as funny to those listening, and depending on your relationship with this person, they may be forced to do the fake-laugh, or the old “oh man that’s funny” substitute. That’s just a fact of life. 2.) it’s a little inappropriate, and while I will allow myself to drop the occasional s-bomb on this thing, I can’t deny the fact my following is mostly fawning aunts and child cake enthusiasts. Gotta keep it somewhat PG, I’ve realized. 3.) The idea here is for you to go to his site. So go.
In the spirit of Adam’s blog, I will, in addition to the usual pictures, add some illustrations of my very own. I’m no Adam Ellis, but, you know. Whatever.
This week I used a German Chocolate Something-or-Other recipe for the innards, and I tried my hand at ganaching again. It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was far from perfect. This technique is going to be difficult to master. Once I had the cake covered, I had completely forgotten that I had planned to go to Dunkin Donuts to see if I couldn’t turn one of their old fashioned donuts into a bird’s nest. I went in there for business, not pleasure, but it turns out that I am incapable of entering a Dunkin Donuts without buying at least one donut for the purpose of eating it in the car. That thing barely made it out of the parking lot.
Back at the house I covered the remaining donut in skin colored fondant. I had a few ideas as to how I was going to go about making this thing look like a nest. I thought about pretzel sticks and cotton candy and a whole mess of shit that would have turned into a sloppy elementary school craft project, I think. Then I thought of layering little pointy objects, which seemed good enough to try. The day before, I again found myself in the most unhappy place in the world, the cake supply store near my office. They’ve got some great cutters there, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts. They have single cutters, they have cutter sets. I was perusing the little ones for the exact teardrop shape I wanted, and boy did I find it. I found it in a set of 10 tiny cutters, and I was halfway to the register when I thought about maybe checking the price tag. Just under $20. That is highway robbery.
So I used the star cutter I already had, cut off the points, and used those. This is low-budget cake decorating, and you should write it down.
I did the finishing touches at the House of Dan, where we watched football and drank things. Here’s proof of that, in two mediums:
The little chicken guy is a personal favorite, he looks absolutely terrified. Also, is it a chicken? A hen or rooster? Or maybe it’s a turkey. I don’t know for sure, it’s not anatomically correct, but I do know that it has lovely emerald eyes and a great personality.
The time came to eat the thing, and everyone pretty much agreed that this cake that came from a box is way better than anything I’ve ever made from scratch. Also, I dropped a large piece of donut in my glass of wine, and drank it anyway. ALSO JENGA
Then things got rowdy and more drinks were had and once the Jets won there was some attempt at basement basketball + guitar. The illustration does an ok job of demonstrating how I mostly remember it.
So that’s about all there is to that. I leave you with one last illustration of myself and Adam – pen, ink and my beloved office stationery.
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