I find it funny that there are so many recipes for brittle that say things like “3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup nuts” and so forth. First of all, the water measurement is totally pointless, because to get sugar to caramelize into brittle, all the water has to boil off first. So let’s say you start with 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup water. That will make brittle after the water all boils off and the sugar can caramelize. Now let’s say you start with 1/4 cup of sugar and 19 cups of water. That will STILL make brittle, eventually, after several hours when all the water boils off. For you see, the sugar can’t caramelize until ALL THE WATER BOILS OFF. This is science!

The second thing is that you do not need a candy thermometer as many recipes call for. You know why? Because you have EYES. When the sugar makes its magical metamorphosis into brittledom it TURNS BROWN. If you use a thermometer to make brittle you are either a masochist or you can’t tell when something clear turns brown. If the second thing describes you then make it with a friend who can visually discriminate between different colors better than you, and problem solved.

So here is what you need for brittle. You need some sugar. How much, ish? Well I don’t know, how much brittle do you want? I usually throw around a cup in a heavy pot. But I certainly don’t measure it. Add some water. If you add 19 cups of water you will wait a very long time so just add a bit of water so the sugar is like really wet sand. It’s OK if it’s not really really wet or if it is really really wet because it is all going to go away. Turn on the flame on medium high and don’t stir it. Wait for science to occur. We will get back to that in a minute.

Meanwhile, once it’s over heat, you have a few other tasks to take care of. Don’t worry, because the magic of caramelization takes awhile–like 10 minutes or more. Start by getting out a piece of parchment paper and putting it on a flat pan. Set it aside. If the pan is wonky find a different pan because wonky will make brittle that’s thicker in parts and thinner in parts. Of course if that happens you should pretend you did that on purpose.

Now you need to dig around in your freezer and around your kitchen to figure out what you’re going to put in the brittle. Usually nuts are the first thought. But that’s probably because I have a lot of different kinds of nuts in my freezer. You can do citrus zest, candied fruit or candied ginger chopped up, coconut, and the like. It’s good to do a mixture. It almost never turns out poorly no matter what you put in it, unless you put fresh things in like raspberries or raw hamburger meat. So don’t put fresh things in. The hot sugar will make them gross. Also hamburger in brittle is gross. Why are you putting that in? You are not using common sense.

How much of these non-fresh mixed things should you put in? I’m going to go with “a handful.” Should you chop them? I don’t know, how big are they? How lazy are you? These are the questions you can ask yourself to make these decisions. Usually I chop larger nuts into smallish but not tiny pieces. But you can also just roll over them with a rolling pin or leave them big. Again, whatever you do, you must pretend that’s what you meant to do and not just something you did out of laziness.

OK! Now your sugar and water is bubbling away on the stove and you have a pile of chopped or non-chopped nuts and maybe something else. You need to check in on the sugar every once in awhile because when the water boils off and the temperature rises, the magic science will happen. The sugar will start to get a little yellow. At this point you should throw in your nuts and stir them with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula but only enough to mix them in and not more. You will want to stir it and mess with it more but you should not do any of those things. This is because of a different kind of science called crystallization. If you agitate the sugar too much it will start to form crystals, and then your brittle will be cloudy and your friends will shun your crappy unprofessional brittle and you will probably lose your job and have to become homeless. All because of SCIENCE. So you see, science can work for or against you. It can also ruin your life.

But I digress! You have carefully stirred in your accoutrements and the sugar is still darkening. Wait until it gets to be a pretty dark amber brown color. It will look darker in the pot than it actually is. Remember, you are not stirring it. You are perhaps swirling it a tad. That should be OK. Turn it off and carefully pour it onto the parchment. Grab the sides of the pan and move it all around to distribute the brittle. Wait until it gets hard. That will happen pretty fast. Break it into shards. Bask in the glory.

I need to mention that there is another kind of science that can work against you in this process which is called BURNING. Did you know the scientific term for “burning” is “burning”? I thought there would be a cooler, science-ier word for it but Google says no. Google also says that “science-ier” is not a word but I don’t care what they say. Anyway, caramelized sugar is really hot. How hot? I don’t know, because I already mentioned that I’m not using a thermometer, but I will say it is hella hot. It also sticks to you so it’s hard to get off your skin quickly and it latches on the continue burning you. So be careful.

That was a very long description for something that I said was easy to make. The how-to, in sum, for those who dislike incessant rambling:

• Prepare a piece of parchment on a flat pan.
• Put some sugar and a bit of water in a pot over medium high heat.
• When it turns brown turn off the heat and add nuts and other stuff.
• Pour it onto a parchment and move the pan to distribute it.
• Wait until it hardens and crack it up.
• Be careful the whole time because it’s hotter than you think.

Related posts:

1. {recipe} Caramel-y Banana Upside-Down Cake This is a pretty easy cake that was inspired by...
2. {recipe} Homemade Hostess Cupcakes {recipe} Homemade Hostess Cupcakes...
3. {recipe} Lemon Raspberry White Chocolate Cake Balls This morning, I received the following email in my inbox...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My favorites are, in no particular order:

• This highly sophisticated Salon.com article about the birthplace of peeps.
• PeepHaiku.com.
• A tutorial from Serious Eats on how to make “Peepshi” – sushi from Peeps and Rice Krispy bars.
• This amazing news article from San Diego in which the “investigative reporters” did things like shooting peeps with 9MM guns, crushing them with a crane, and the like- in an attempt to prove that they are indestructible. (Um… slow news day, perhaps?)
• The Peep Research site which explores the effects of smoking and alcohol on peeps, and performs scientific and medical experiments on them- well-documented and hilariously presented, including the example below.

So how do you feel about using peeps as a medium for your art? What’s your vote for best use of peeps?

Related posts:

1. {late to the party} An Inappropriately Timed Easter Post About Natural Dyes for Easter Eggs As you know Easter was last weekend, so this post...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

Related posts:

1. {fancy shmancy} Kayak Wedding Cake My friends got married on a mountaintop in Israel, and...
2. {recipe} Homemade Hostess Cupcakes {recipe} Homemade Hostess Cupcakes...
3. {recipe} Lemon Raspberry White Chocolate Cake Balls This morning, I received the following email in my inbox...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

Related posts:

1. {something for the kiddos} Easy Car Cake My nephew turned 5 recently and swore he wanted a...
2. {recipe from the internetz} Strawberry Sour Cream Pie from Worth the Whisk I saw this strawberry sour cream pie mentioned on my...
3. {recipe + pottymouth} Pancake Ice Cream with Bacon Candy My last couple posts have been kind of weird and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

Related posts:

1. {recipe + pottymouth} Pancake Ice Cream with Bacon Candy My last couple posts have been kind of weird and...
2. {halloween} Halloween Treats From Around The Series Of Tubes And Dumptrucks I was looking at Halloween ideas with my 8 year...
3. {wordless wednesday} Creepy Mickey Mouse I Saw in an Antique Store ...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I have no words. I love it.

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

Related posts:

1. {utahlicious} Super Sweet Swimmin’ Hole in Utah Even though caves kind of freak me out, I am...
2. {time waster} Generate a Color Palette From a Photo! (Warning: Addictive) I love to play with this SUPER FUN app that...
3. {gross} Skeazy, Squeezy Bacon No words needed. Maybe just a heavy gagging sound. Or...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.