These Cakes that Don't Run
It's the 4th of July week - one of those times of year when food writers get a lazy. Instead of finding a story to write about that is compelling or might inspire some delicious cooking, they throw in the towel and pretend to teach how to prepare a dish that will really only impress the equally obsessed: weather forecasters and busy-body housewives.
When an article begins by saying, "this dish can be showpieced on your 4th of July table and taste great at the same time," you know the dessert will look tacky and will taste like Styrofoam.
But if you want to shout out to all those naysayers, your doubting neighbors, those Red Staters, that you still love this country (despite the elected leadership) bake the Uncle Sam Cake. There will be no question of your stance with this cake as your centerpiece. Don't forget bigger the cake the greater your patriotism.
These gals must be really patriotic
All patriotic cakes' ingredients are the same. After doing extensive research we found that all recipes required only two ingredients (if you don't count the three shades of food coloring - coloring that you can bet does not run). The ingredients? A box of moist yellow-cake mix and vanilla frosting (from a can). Now what says patriotism faster or more convincingly than boxed cake and canned frosting? You ask what it means to live free? The answer is complex, but it begins with pre-prepared food. Food that frees you from your shackles of the kitchen to pursue acts that a free person would, being that he/she lives in the freest of nations.
We're just looking forward to the fall holidays. Our favorite is Thanksgiving, a time when "creative" types get so lost in their inventiveness that they forget that the turkey entree they're preparing really should not have some semblance to the bird's live incarnation. We feel like this is wrong. The bird is dead so it does not care. But we care.
It's a dead roasted chicken, garnished to look like a live Cabaret chicken
Okay. We've lost that patriotic buzz...and our appetite.
Comments
'nuff said.
Posted by: res publica | June 30, 2005 01:50 PM
Okay, that "'nuff said" was supposed to be accompanied a picture, but I guess you can't post IMG tags in these comments, so you'll have to click on this
Posted by: res publica | June 30, 2005 01:52 PM
that American cheesecake takes the cake
Posted by: Jody | June 30, 2005 10:27 PM
I'm pretty sure the dancing cooked chicken with a fruit n' veggi head and outfit takes the cake. And my sanity.
Posted by: res publica | July 1, 2005 03:26 AM
the cabaret chicken caption is priceless. thanks for the laugh cakehead
Posted by: Anonymous | July 1, 2005 03:34 AM