My nephew turned 5 recently and swore he wanted a circuit board cake. At the 11th hour he decided he wanted a car cake instead. Online searches for car cakes yielded a lot of lameness and ugly-ass cakes, so I winged it. Wung it? Whatever. I figured something out, and was pretty pleased when it actually, totally looked like a car.

I know the icing isn’t perfect here- that’s the beauty of making something for a person who is only 5. Perfection is not what they’re after. They are after copious amounts of frosting and candy on a cake that’s shaped like something other than a cake, which makes them pretty easy to please. I think the biggest compliment came when, after admiring the cake for several minutes, my nephew turned to my Dad and with saucer eyes and his jaw hanging open, and said- “GRAMPA- do you realize this CAR is EATABLE?!?!?”

Eatable indeed! I made this somewhat nasty hot pink strawberry cake in a 9×13 pan and then cut a third of it off, lengthwise. Then I cut the long skinny piece I had in half perpendicular. Like this:

I flipped the 2 pieces 90 degrees and set them next to each other on top of the remaining large cake and stuck them on with frosting. They were kind of slope-y which actually made it look more like a car. I wanted really sturdy, fluffy frosting for this, so I used a fluffy meringue frosting (my mom made it so I’m not sure how- something about like this) and tinted it blue to attach the cake pieces and cover the whole thing in gobs and gobs of icing. I made a little bit of white royal icing for the windows, doors, and writing. Tic-tacs for lights and blinkers, oreos for wheels, sour belts for racing stripes and windshield wipers, some weird white tootsie rolls for the bumpers, and voila! A car that any 5-year-old would love.

And now for something completely different: the GINGERBREAD CASBAH.

The gingerbread casbah came into being because every year, we throw a themed Christmas party for around 100 of our closest friends. Since we just took a honeymoon to the Middle East, we thought we could try out some new tricks at a Middle East-themed Christmas party. After all, that is where the whole Christmas thing started, right? An evite full of bad puns later (”we are Beiruting for you to come”, and so forth) we had our “Christmas at the Casbah” party ready to go, and all we needed was an impressive centerpiece.

This is not really a casbah, but a typical courtyard house. (Casbah sounds cooler though, so that’s more of a marketing-focused name for it.) On our honeymoon, we stayed in a beautiful hotel in Old City of Damascus called Beit Al Mamlouka, and I very loosely modeled the casbah on my recollections of how it looked. I say “very loosely” because their floors weren’t made of sour belts and jujubes, and their walls weren’t edible.

For the gingerbread, I used a recipe that C&H tweeted me- and it was great. Alas, I haven’t actually tasted it, but from a construction point of view it was tops – simple to make, very easy to roll out, not too sticky, sturdy, and kept its shape during baking. Also, it smells delicious, which adds a nice extra sensory dimension to the house. The royal icing that glues the whole thing together is just a stiff mixture of egg whites and powdered sugar with a pinch of cream of tartar, mixed with the paddle attachment of a Kitchen-Aid.

I did most of the shape-cutting freehand, but used a star cutters for the front windows. To make the windows, we rolled out the dough and put it on a silpat. Then we cut shapes out and arranged crushed jolly ranchers inside. When they baked, they became clear and solid. You have to let them cool while carefully loosening them from the silpat, as the candy stays soft and molten for about 30 minutes after coming out of the oven. Once they harden fully, they are structurally quite sound.

I thought that doing this alone would be both boring and incredibly frustrating and also not come out as well, so I assembled a crack team to help out. Rodney the pastry chef is always an excellent addition to this type of team, and did lots of the rolling, fine icing work, and construction assistance. Heather took care of cobblestones and windows, while MJ formed small furnishings including the excellent hookah.

I am a firm believer that everything on a true gingerbread house should be edible, and should be candy. Also, I can make like anything out of marzipan or fondant- ergo, marzipan and fondant are cheating. Sculpting something out of a tootsie roll is so much more impressive. So I refused to allow any non-edible, non-candy/gingerbread/icing objects adorn the house.

I bought electric flicker tea lights to illuminate it during the party, to make the windows shine. Merry Christmas everyone!

Here’s the breakdown of what’s what:

• Windows: crushed jolly ranchers baked into the gingerbread
• Tile floor: rainbow sour belts, jujubes, licorice wheels, and silver dragees
• Balcony floors: red hots, tic tacs, and silver dragees
• Balcony railings: sesame candies, licorice wheels (unrolled), jujubes
• Cobblestones: formed tootsie roll slices with yellow sprinkles
• Hanging lamps: licorice wheels and Haribo raspberry gummies
• Hookah: deconstructed tootsie rolls, sour belts, and licorice wheels
• Table: gingerbread star with dragees and jujubes
• Chair: sesame candies and tootsie rolls
• Tree: iced cookie with Haribo raspberry gummy and tootsie roll
• Camels: iced cookies with sprinkles

I wasn’t able to find any other instances of Middle Eastern gingerbread architecture on the web, but I did come across some gingerbread structures of note. Here are a few of my favorites from around teh interwebz.

• Max’s cave from Where The Wild Things Are, from A Table for Two <<<btw, AMAZING!!!>>>
• Gingerbread Houseboat from Houseboat Eats
• Gingerbread Woodcutters Cabin from Sweetopia
• Not gingerbread, bacon and licorice house from Almost Bourdain
• Cool 2 story house by Brown Sugar Bee

Happy Halloween! So, it’s a cute idea to put gooey candy into plastic Star Wars lightsabers, right?

Oh wait. Picture a kid trying to get the candy out. Um… creepy and perverse. Not helpful that it’s called “spliquid.”

YaYa Chou, a Taiwanese artist, created this bearskin-shaped rug out of Gummi Bears and fake nails, and it’s amazing.

I have no words. I love it.

Visit YaYa Chou’s site for more info and photos of this and other works!

It occurred to me that I always take lots of photos of food and shops and streets and signs when I travel to faraway lands, but I rarely do so in my own town. San Francisco, after all, is a major tourist destination, and there are LOTS of interesting things to photo right here in my own backyard. The area around Bryant and 24th Streets, for example, is a slowly and funkily gentrifying old-school Mexican neighborhood that’s colorful in more ways than one, and it’s a prime spot for a mini photo journal.

The one, the only, the original- the garish Roosevelt Tamale Parlor sign is a long-standing beacon of this ‘hood. Cute and quaint, with great… wait for it… tamales.
Roosevelt Tamale Parlor: 2817 24th St. between Bryant and York.

Is there possibly a better name for anything than “Discolandia?” Hmm. I think NO. Love the color scheme and stark, slightly askew, sans-serif all caps action as well. No idea what it’s like inside, as woefully I’ve never actually BEEN inside.
Discolandia: 2964 24th St. between Florida and Alabama.

I have always loved the Taqueria Vallarta sign, for many reasons. For one thing, I find it so mysterious that they didn’t make one more segment on the sign so the bottom one didn’t have to share 2 letters. Also, the vertical orientation makes it completely unintuitive and tricky to read what it says. And need I mention it’s cool Mexican flag colors? Still, this case of branding gone majorly wrong hasn’t prevented them from sticking around for years and years. Probably because the tacos are good and they’re open for gorging even after the bars close. But that’s just a hunch.
Taqueria Vallarta: 3033 24th St. between Balmy and Treat.

A positive piece of gentrification- some young hipster folks saved and resurrected this decades-old icon. They brought back all the best bits (like glass jars of candy on the counter and thick homemade shakes) and updated the worst bits (like greasy blah diner food) so you can get all the nostalgia PLUS all of the tastiness. The cheddar, scallion, bacon pancakes are my favorite!
St. Francis Fountain: 2801 24th St. between Bryant and York.

This is a closeup of a taco shop sign. It totally creeps me out. Check out how the big pig is happy to be being roasted, while the little pig on the right appears to be roasting and possibly spearing his own child pig in another pot. What kinda sicko painted this thing and how did they think it would inspire me to eat carnitas?
Crazy pig painting: I don’t remember where exactly this sign is, but I think it’s roughly opposite Discolandia.

“Burbujas” (boor-BOO-huss) is inherently a funny word (meaning “bubbles) but I’ve always thought it was made additionally funny by the addition of “Mr.” Not Señor Burbujas, not Mr. Bubbles… Mr. Burbujas. The bra and underwear jauntily painted on the window and the Florida Street murals in the background add to the scene.
Mr. Burbujas: SE corner of 24th and Florida.

Soda-themed skateboard decks in the window of Mission Skateboards, a new gritty-cool skate shop.
Mission Skateboards: 3045 24th St. between Balmy and Treat. (The sign is just a circle with an M on it.)

I don’t know if it’s the trash cans, the tagging, the metal cage, the stark stenciled letters, or what… but I think “Fountain of Life Church” is stretching it just a tad…
Iglesia Fuente de Vida: next to Discolandia

I love the word “Mexica-tessen” and the funky Brady Bunch font on the lit up sign. Somehow the font plus the palm tree always make it seem like it should be in LA. You can get killer tamales, fresh masa and homemade tortillas.
La Palma: 2884 24th St. between Florida and Bryant.

Newcomer Sugarlump is a sweet cafe with a lovely back patio and a sexy 70s fireplace. You might think Tina Fey glasses and shiny Mac laptops are required for entry, but they’ll sell you an organic fair trade cup of coffee even if you’re sans specs or carrying a (gasp!) Dell.
Sugarlump: 2862 24th St. between Bryant and Florida.

I like that you can buy a bra AND send a fax in the same place.
Manuel’s Store: Incongruously right next to Sugarlump.

If you want fancier underpants hit up Candy Kitchen which sells absolutely no candy, just fancy, pretty, pricey lingerie.
Candy Kitchen: 2807 24th St. between Bryant and York.