Seasonal items are a fact of life in the food world. When you have a favorite, you know the rule: Get It While You Can! That’s one reason we wait longingly for apple strudel season. While you can make it at home, there’s something about getting a …
Seasonal items are a fact of life in the food world. When you have a favorite, you know the rule: Get It While You Can!
That’s one reason we wait longingly for apple strudel season. While you can make it at home, there’s something about getting a traditional strudel to celebrate the holidays.
OK, we admit we got a bit ahead of the game this year, thanks to a trip to Germany, where we took a break in the Martins-Viertel neighborhood of Cologne. After a traditional German meal at Peter’s Brauhaus, we topped it off with a slice of amazing apple strudel.
But we don’t live in Germany, and so–that pleasant moment aside–we wait for our strudel. Our favorite comes from Helmut’s Original Austrian Strudel. If you time it right at any of the markets where they sell, you may be able to get it not only in apple, but in cherry, cheese, or almond apricot (a new favorite!).
Helmut’s is not sold online, as far as we can tell, but it is available at various holiday markets in the U.S. Coming up you can find it here:
It’s worth the trek if you are close to any of those areas, and a bit closer than either Austria or Germany! The strudel also freezes and reheats well (in the oven, please, not the microwave, for best retention of flavor).
What are you waiting for? Get it while you can…and, if you prefer to bake your own, we recommend the recipes found at Little Vienna or House of Nash Eats.
Sometimes you just need the comforts of home, even when you aren’t anywhere near home. That’s when local places such as Serenity Farms come into play. We found this mostly-bakery shop along one of those winding back roads of Arkansas. It was off the …
Sometimes you just need the comforts of home, even when you aren’t anywhere near home. That’s when local places such as Serenity Farms come into play.
We found this mostly-bakery shop along one of those winding back roads of Arkansas. It was off the beaten path a bit, but we discovered there is a second location not far away, on Main Street in Leslie, Ark. Still, this tiny version had everything we needed on a drizzly day.
The lunch menu was limited to just a couple of things: one sandwich and/or potato soup. We chose the French dipped sandwich, made with luscious roast beef, cheese, and a flavorful gravy and served on one of their ever-so-slightly-crusty bakery rolls. We grabbed a couple of the speciality sodas from their refrigerator case and relaxed at one of the two tables. Other items for sale included a wide variety of organic products and farm-to-table items, as well as local pottery and crafts.
The Arkansas cycling brochure on the table gives a hint as to their clientele–and the road is ideal for outdoor exploration. The shop is reportedly near one of the natural wonders of the world, literally called Natural Bridge.
As we ate, a constant stream of people came through the door, some regulars and some tourists, like us, looking for a bakery break. Many walked away with coffee, and the Mayan roast that is French-pressed and “a little spicy” seemed to be the flavor of the day.
The operator told us there are more choices at the main location, but we were happy with the simplicity and flavors. She said, “All of the pastries have butter, cream, and sugar and are made right here, in the back of the store.”
Trust me, you’ll want to go to the Serenity Farm website to drool over the fresh breads and pastries. We snagged a chocolate croissant for the road, along with a loaf of sourdough bread.
We round up cakes that look like paintings and sculptures from artists like Picasso, Warhol, and Van Gogh. Just look at #everythingiscake or #isitcake.
Cake inspired by art is having a moment.
True, it’s never been hard to find ambitious pastry projects on TikTok or Instagram, but these are more often than not confections shaped like familiar objects: a watermelon, a camera, a pot of pasta, a kettle. (All are represented in a single video at Tuba Geckil’s TikTok account, @redrosecake_tubageckil). But there seems to be a new focus in 2022 on cake as objet d’art.
The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, for example, recently hosted its Great Blanton Bake-Off; 16 bakers recreated works of art found in the museum’s collection (21,000 works to choose from) in the hopes of winning gift cards from local pastry shops and Blanton membership packages — plus bragging rights, of course.
Blythe Johnson, the winner of the amateur category, re-created Mac Wells’ Untitled piece (see images below). Her cake had layers of blueberry almond sponge, lemon curd and whipped cream, according to Smithsonian Magazine. She made the joconde many times to find the perfect colors to match the artwork — stopping and starting over a two-week period — to complete the cake.
Georgia Chido, a 15-year old who won the under-18 division, reproduced a textile work by Venezuelan artist Luis Montiel (see actual item under the cake version below). She made the fondant on her own and then did all the color-matching to make sure that the cake’s hues were accurate.
The top prize among pro bakers went to Hannah Erwin, founder of HC Confections and a business administration and marketing student at Texas A&M University. Her cakes looked exactly like six different works of art from the Blanton collections — including geometric, abstract and pop-art works (see actual items below at left and cake versions below at right).
This apparently kickstarted the meme #everythingiscake, which continues to thrive and has more than 12,000 examples. You might have also noticed that Netflix launched an engaging new show, Is It Cake? in March of this year based on the idea that good bakers can make cake look like anything. That hashtag — #isitcake — also has thousands of examples now.
The New York Times noticed the trend twice in 2021 with articles dedicated to trompe l’oeil cakes and whimsical cakes. Further research, however, confirms that people have been gawking at cakes as art for years, even decades. Bored Panda compiled some noteworthy works of edible art in 2020 and an article in the now-defunct Flavorwire is titled “Amazing Cakes Inspired by Art,” but none of the pictures come through (both their Instagram and website seemed to have come to a halt in 2019).
The blogger-baker-graphic designer at Sweet Fancy Cakes — Kristen from North Salt Lake,Utah — published a post with her rendition of a Mondrian in cake form in 2015 (it’s the Mondrian at the top of the article) but unlike the painting, it probably smelled and tasted as good as it looks. Earlier examples of cakes-that-look-like-art probably stretch all the way back to the 1600s — the era when round cakes were first baked in Europe, according to FoodTimeline.Org. But no one had TikTok back then….
Pinterest Boards of Art as Cake
Of course, there are always Pinterest boards dedicated to the topic as well as Instagram accounts by cake makers who could easily get into the forgery business — like this Russian company (Tortik Annushka) that has over a million followers.
Below are more snapshots of art as cake from Pinterest.
And finally, if you want to see a demonstration of someone making a cake that looks like a painting (and frame!), check out Rosanna Pansino‘s “Cake or Fake / Painting on Cake” video below.
Seasonal items are a fact of life in the food world. When you have a favorite, you know the rule: Get It While You Can!
