Recipe #1: Down the Rabbit Hole

With my travels to Barcelona looming near (aka the day after tomorrow!), I've come to a stark realization. I will not have the luxury of my own kitchen for the next 4.5 months. Granted I will have a kitchen, just not my own like I do back at my house (which I share with my mom, but get to tinker around with by day and late at night).

Inspired by a particularly fitting episode of "Cake Boss" on TLC, I decided to sculpt a dog. Not just any dog, but a Rottweiler. Why? Well, I was baking for a football party, with plenty of Rottweiler lovers in attendence--namely my mother and uncle.

So I began baking:

I began with a Rice Krispy base for the head, which was quite a bit of fun to make. Lots of tasty marshmallow morsels to mop up after the base was formed. Simply get:

3 tbs margarine
4 cups mini marshmallows
6 cups Rice Krispies

After melting butter and marshmallows, simply mix with Rice Krispies and shape! Let sit overnight, and lick fingers well.

Next came the fondant. This is the pretty covering that looks quite a bit cleaner than your basic icing topping. This one merely requires:

16 oz mini marshmallows
2 T water
2 lb powdered sugar

Here you melt the marshmallows with water, and add in the powdered sugar in parts. Much like kneading dough, this process took me forever by hand--partly because I was chatting with Lu about Spain, partly because I lack big enough biceps.

Another helpful shortcut came with the buttercream frosting. I decided to buy it, since they are easily found at the supermarkets (unlike everything else, INCLUDING my food coloring!).

I tried this out first with a heart shape, and used cherry juice for the pink food coloring:

Oh yes, I hadn't located the rolling pin at that point. Hence the lumpy heart with clumped arteries.

But, alas, for the dog, I covered the base with a thin layer of buttercream frosting. After rolling out the fondant, I draped that over. The frosting helps it STICK to the base, and tastes mighty yummy too!

Drumroll please...

 

 

OK so it looks like some odd rabbit-dog (reference the popular Nickelodeon show "Cat Dog"), but it was mighty tasty nonetheless. And the dark chocolate-covered blueberry eyes were the first to go--sorry little buddy. You were just too tempting.

Any special requests? Expect to see more of these concoctions as birthdays start to roll around...

Reeling from a post-sugar high,
The Chew