savoury vs. sweet

inspired by ming’s cupcakes (a super simple website of baked treats made with bloody brilliant ingredients like chombord liquer, beets, parsnips and nutella), and, um, food in general, my friend kristen (o’ Kanibal Home) and i decided to have a long overdue bake swap. so, after a long day at work, i came home to whip up some cornbread “cupcakes” with goat cheese frosting and bacon (savoury 1, found here) while kristen did the same with a bunch of port wine and cherry chocolate cupcakes with mascarpone frosting (cupcake 26, found here). mm, right? soaking the cornmeal in buttermilk overnight in prep was worth the wait and highlights of my eve included the intense smell of sizzling bacon filling my kitchen, “taste-testing” the glorious combination that is goat cheese + cream cheese, wielding that glorious concoction in a piping bag and later, embellishing with nature’s sprinkles: bacon and fresh parsley of course. the muffins came out  great but they really made me want a bowl of soup to go with them. that would be a perfect meal and i may have to make that happen very soon.

a little later in the night, hooded and meeting on the dark sidewalk of wayne street like just any other couple of delinquents would, we  made good on our deal (i.e traded half of our batches with each other). i had one of kristen’s creations as a midnight snack and it was a much enjoyed weird/wonderful twist on a chocolate cupcake with an unexpected (and hard to describe) flavor. also, mascarpone frosting may be my new all time favorite (sorry, cream cheese).

hey, they’re no robicelli’s, but we both definitely won.

behold savoury 1:

and cupcake 26:

crème brûlée on a saturday

banana muffin beehives

bee·hive (bē′hīv′)
noun
1. a box or other shelter for a colony of bees, in which they make and store honey
2. a place of great activity
3. a woman’s hairdo in which the hair is worn teased on top of the head, resembling a beehive

these, however, are simply mini banana walnut muffins topped with a generous spiral of honey and cream cheese frosting. 

rubella 12.12.2009

phoebe.

aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds – roland barthes

these images of little phoebe at the park were inspired by her bedroom, where silhouettes of birds in flight adorn the walls and ward off bad dreams. that, and i really like birds.

bake it pretty

at 3 a.m. on one clear autumn night, when i finally finished putting the finishing touches on my “baking bookcase”,  i felt very accomplished and only a little insane…

ode to the ever mysterious (and tasty) bat girl

my dark chocolate bat girl cupcakes with blackberry filling and buttercream frosting, 10.31.09

black no. 1.99

this weekend i found this ceramic apothecary jar for $1.99 at the salvation army. it is unmarked so i have no idea how old it may be (possibly, not very) but still perhaps one of my favorite $1.99 ever spent. pix carbonis (also called coal tar) is a brown or black liquid of high viscosity (wikipedia) and a by-product of carbonized coal and wood. coal tar has been used medicinally in the treatment of skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis and often given internally in the form of pills or syrup. a similar tar has also been used in ancient egyptian mummification and to pave the first streets to be paved in 8th century a.d.

coal tar is also an active ingredient in black salve, a corrosive and often dangerous herbal paste initially created by native americans and believed for centuries to “draw out” infections such as rashes and cancers from the body. my mom says she always remembers black salve being one of the only things consistently in the medicine cabinet when she was a kid and the distinct feel and smell never left her memory. in the medicine cabinet of my childhood it was vick’s vapor rub, peroxide, rubbing alcohol, and orange flavored st. joseph’s chewable baby aspirin. mmm. the end.

hair and bone and little teeth

adventures in jewelry making…

necklace with old key, chandelier crystal, and badger toe bone (bone from necromance)

necklace made with 19th century “gem” tintype photograph (thank you samantha!)

(not real) tooth brooch

saturday (somewhere between cupcake fest and dee j’s western corral) i picked up this neckace at a local shop. i bought a ring once from this etsy seller was surpsied that she lived locally. i love so many of her things!  see more of  schmutzerland’s amazingness here!

from dreammeaning.org:
“adornments like octopus medallions were worn by sailors to ward off evil.  seamen understood the eerie magic of the octopus.  it’s black ink-jet expulsions and other-worldly appearance struck awe in the observer. ”