Is My Blog on a Sugar High?
Let’s get this out of the way first: We’re weird.
Not only are we weird, but we are leaving for the weekend bright and early Friday morning. Now, one would think this departure would mean that we’d given up any hope of participating in either Sugar High Friday or Is My Blog Burning. Or, that at the most we’d pick one of these two events and leave it at that. But since we are, as we said, weird, we believe that instead of ignoring food blogging events when we’re pressed for time, we should embrace them. Both at once. With zeal.
And with (yes, you’ve guessed it by now) weirdness.
And so, with a cupful of grapefruit juice and a sea of aspic (ocean blue, of course), we christen the Sweet Fleet:
Puff pastry barquettes filled with grapefruit pastry cream, topped with white chocolate sails, on a sea of blue-tinted aspic with foamy wakes of egg white and a savory tropical island made of almond meal, oregano underbrush, and a palm of carrot trunk, green bell pepper fronds, and marzipan cocoanuts.
(phew!)
Note for the more adventurous: We didn’t actually eat much of this. Which isn’t to say the barquettes weren’t good, they were just…well, a bit over-the-top.
Other important safety tips (aka Chopper remembers why he hates marzipan…again.):
1. Toothpicks and marzipan can only hold together a palm tree made of sliced vegetables for so long.
(No, it didn’t fall over)
2. When photographing a regatta of white chocolate sails under hot sunlight, move quickly.
And lastly,
3. Making pastry cream on an electric range sucks ass.
For our next trick: A remake of Duran Duran’s Rio video with finger puppets!
Monday update: The round-ups have been posted. To check out everyone’s great entries for Sugar High Friday, go here, and for Is My Blog Burning, go here.
May 19th, 2005 at 11:47 pm
Whatever it is you’re drinking, I want some.
Fantastic.
May 20th, 2005 at 4:20 am
Original! What else can I say. It is going to be difficult to top this one. I’m not much for aspic, but the barquettes sound pretty yummy!
May 20th, 2005 at 7:54 am
WOW. That is all I can say. Everyone else might as well quit now and take the weekend off because this is the epitome of a blog burning sugar high if you ask me. Congratulations. Your dish will live on in our hearts and in our minds…even if it is a bit scary ;)
May 20th, 2005 at 11:07 am
Ugg! I have to show my kids this. And then I will never be as great in their eyes again. Why can’t you make an ocean in the south seas for dinner, dad? why?
May 20th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Wow, yes I agree you’re weird, but creatively weird.
May 20th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
I second (or is it third) the WOWs. Visually amazing.
May 20th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
this is so creative! weird yes, but very fun.
May 21st, 2005 at 7:06 am
Amazing! You guys are so creative!
May 21st, 2005 at 4:12 pm
I am AWESTRUCK! That is so cool! What a beautiful concept. The making is usually way more fun than the eating, anyway, or so say I! Thanks so much for such a creative, inspiring entry!
May 21st, 2005 at 6:58 pm
Are you sure you’re not one of my children? This is just the kind of thing my son would make. And if he was still 10 I’d have to eat it.
This creation could lead to a whole new meme!
May 22nd, 2005 at 3:21 am
Unbelievable! A star is born.
May 22nd, 2005 at 9:16 am
you’ve definitely made my day with this! what i want to know, though, is did you eat it?
May 22nd, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Landscape cookery at its very best! ;-)
May 22nd, 2005 at 8:11 pm
this is so damn cool!
May 22nd, 2005 at 8:40 pm
Thanks everyone for all the great comments! I’m going to have to let Chopper Dave answer the question about eating the barquettes. Alas, my poor lactose-intolerant tummy took one gander at the pastry cream and ran screaming.
May 23rd, 2005 at 2:37 am
Oh. My. Goodness. You guys are SO creative! :)
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:02 am
Great job!!
May 23rd, 2005 at 11:51 am
mrs d and the chopper! you guys are crazy weird! but crazy weird in an awesome way!!! far too cute to eat…and i can just imagine the two of you huddled around a table making little boats…uh, half buzzed on…greyhounds? (graprefruit juice and vodka) - LOL!
May 23rd, 2005 at 1:34 pm
Thank you one and everyone. I’m glad to see that the “Sweet Fleet” is meeting with such approval. To the question, “did you eat it?”, the answer is yes. They were so intensely sweet that I could only have one, however. All in all, it didn’t take very much time to do the whole production, the thing that took the most time was putting the tree together ;-)
May 23rd, 2005 at 5:09 pm
AMAZING!
May 23rd, 2005 at 7:23 pm
You two are the funniest most adorable pair of oddballs in the food blogging world. Like a breath of fresh air. Please don’t stop. I can’t help but wonder what would have been created if you’d spent the weekend at home. An entire Battle of the Trafalgar or something?
May 23rd, 2005 at 9:01 pm
Trafalgar? My favorite naval battle! (Oh, honey, can we do a scale model of the HMS Victory next time out?)
Have I mentioned that we got married in Regency era costumes and Chopper Dave was the spitting image of Captain Jack Aubrey? (I kid you not.)
Oh, and we will do our very best not to stop blogging. Many thanks! :-)
May 26th, 2005 at 2:18 am
o/’ Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand… o/”
(darn blog won’t let me add some spiffy quarter-note images in there, so you get ascii-art)
October 20th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
ohmigosh. i can’t show this to my kids or they will BEG for me to copy this! and i just can’t. i can’t.
i LOVE the aspic, by the way. how did you get that awesome shade of blue?
October 24th, 2005 at 10:05 am
Hi Dave and Mrs D…Unfortunately I’m going to have to stop reading Belly-Timber from now on. It makes me feel too ham-handed and inadequate…