Congratulations to Mariah who makes White chocolate Chiffon cake with whipped cream icing and strawberries. So sweet and lovely! We hope you enjoy Bob’s book as much as we have.
I see a lot of cookbooks, but not many that make me smile as much as Bob Blumer’s Glutton For Pleasure
Blumer’s book is part fun recipes, entertaining stories, and edgy Emily Post (“tips for keeping inebriated guests from driving home” anyone?), with smatterings of his surreal art throughout.
What first caught my eye was his playful recipe titles and photography. Nutcases, for example, are honey-drizzled Gorgonzola knobs sandwiched between candied walnut halves served in walnut shells. Or how about Chinese Sno-Cones: colorful chicken salad served in baked wonton trumpets. Salmon Cupcakes… well, click on the recipe below. It’s been a long time since I’ve fantasized about making someone else’s recipes.
Eye-catching photography and clever recipe titles make for good fantasy, but is the food grounded? Are the recipes doable and do they taste good? Blumer, indeed, knows how to cook. His food is solid, his flavors innovative, yet appealing.
He also knows how to put nervous cooks at ease. In each recipe he points out uncommon ingredients, level of difficulty, active and inactive prep time, as well as any advance prep. Plus he offers drink suggestions, and even “music to cook by.”
And there’s so much more. A wine tutorial cleverly titled ‘Stop and Smell the Rosés’, smart advice on streamlining your kitchen (DIY Kitchen Feng Shui), a “how to” for enjoying your own party called The Art of a Dinner Party. Or how about this: “20 Ways to Avoid Making Dessert.”
Stephen Perrine of Men’s Health said. “If Anthony Bourdain, Nigella Lawson, and Salvador Dali had a ménage a trois, this would be their love child.” Wow, wish I’d thought of that.
One of you will win a copy of Glutton for Pleasure. Just tell us the most whimsical dish you’ve ever made. Deadline is 9:00 PM ET Monday, May 16th (Maggy’s birthday, by the way!)
To get you going, I’ll start. I used to make a sweet pastry cornucopia that I filled with fresh and dried fruit and nuts: a fall centerpiece that doubled as a dessert. I wonder what Bob Blumer would have called it.
tried to make sweet potato biscuits and it the recipe never stopped…i kept adding flour because the gough was so loose and by the time I was done the dough was beige and the biscuits were bricks…
1st! Happy birthday Maggy! Tried to make very tall biscuits I had on vacatio, Kept adding baking soda will not the tall biscuits I wanted. Fianlly figured it out. I was not at 6000 feet but, sea level! LOL!
Eclairs! And I’ve been looking for an excuse to make them again!
Happy birthday Maggy!! I tried to make a molten lava cake that turned out so dumpy and liquidity the kids wouldn’t even eat it. Kids not eat chocolate?!? Yeah it happens.
Hmm… My food isn’t very whimsical (sadly). My family always likes to make Bunny cakes from two round cakes with licorice bow ties and candy eyes–that’s kind of fun!
When my boys were in first grade, I would bake weekly treats to help with word ending sounds. Memerobale ones were the week of an – Dan the tan man with fan cookie, and the week of am – where I constructed clams out of rice krispie treats that I had tinted grey – not particularly appealing- sliced in half, propped open with a pretzel stick, and iced the inside pink. Ah, good times!
For Halloween one year I made a bunch of themed foods with silly names for the kids. They all thought the Black Bug Dip had real bugs in it and wouldn’t eat it. It was just Black Bean Dip and all of us adults tried to convince them otherwise, but it didn’t work. Ah well, I had fun with it!! 🙂
Happy Birthday Maggy!! I made banana chocolate chip cookies one time to try to coax my husband to come home early from a business trip!
I made a fruit salad with yogurt honey sauce, served in melon and small watermelon bowls. The whimsical part came when guests created masks out of the melon & watermelon rinds. The photos are hysterical.
I take care of my grandchildren one day a week during the summer. Last summer we decided to create something new each week. One day we made chocolate chip cookie dough and decided to add things other than chocolate chips. The pieces of Hershy bar laid on top worked well, but the cup up granny smith apple got a thumbs down!
I make my own ice cream using soy milk. I love searching for traditional ice cream recipes and blending them to create a twisted flavour. My favourite by far is ginger maple. There are enough varieties of maple syrup to play with and candied ginger to garnish with that i can reinvent this dessert over and over.
I made ice cream cone cakes with lots of frosting and sprinkles!!
Would have to be the wedding cake I made for my best friends wedding in 2000. The bride’s brother added a personal touch by driving like a mad man with a huge 5 tier wedding cake in the back, wrecking part of the cake (even though we told him to go slowly) and making me sweat in the middle of August, trying really hard to fix the “personal touch” he had added. We all still laugh about it but I tool 2 whole days to bake and decorate the cake.
My most whimsical dish would be the chilled berry gazpacho that I poured into shot glasses over a single frozen berry that turned into the surprise as my guests drank them.
I’m pretty boring when it comes to food… need some inspiration and I think this book would be it =)
My most whimsied dish isn’t very whimsical… I’ll blame my newness to cooking (and my picky eating husband). I used to make itty-bitty hamburger desserts though (I think I spied some on your bake sale table!) with vanilla wafers and peppermint patties… still a cute idea. But I’d rather make salmon cupcakes now!
I’m not sure if it qualifies for whimsical, but I made the orange marmalade cake from the Mitford series.
My husband and I have a “steak-umms” party every year and serve steak-umms (remember, those frozen processed meat slices???), sauteed onions, tater tots and to top it off – jello salad. The house smells like steak-umms for days….
My most whimsical dish was inspired by my Mom. In the 70’s she used to make meatloaf with hard-boiled eggs hidden inside. My brothers and sister loved this dinner with the hidden surprise! I now make it for my family as a special week night dinner in honor of my mother.
I like rules, recipes and policies. Sadly, I am not that whimsical. But I guess I’ll go with making that bunny cake where you take a square pan and a round pan. Then my daughters (I have a Maggie too) helped me decorate it.
The most whimsical dish I ever made was a gigantic cake in the shape of a turtle. I covered it in a patchwork of multi-colored fondant (that took about a whole day!) and it was absolutely adorable when it was done. I loved it!
My son wanted to have “the snake man” come for his birthday party. We made a snake cake, sub sandwiches cut and plated to look snake-like, and then put blue sports drink and neon gummy worms in an electric beverage fountain. The snakes the man show and telled were upstaged by a baby alligator that decided to “pee” all over my living room when the snake man held him up for the boys to see!