Epic Portions

Author: admin

  • Hello, Gerbil!

    Gerbil cake!

    Hello, Epic Portions readers!  My name is Megan, and I’m new around here.  I’ve joined up to talk about baking.

    See, I believe in baking creatively.  It’s not really enough for me for something to just taste good.  I think it needs to be creative, either in concept (I like to make up my own recipes based on inspiration), or execution (I like to bake things in the shape of other, more ridiculous things.)  I mean, think about the idea behind baking: take some sugar, and some butter, and some other stuff that tastes good (chocolate, fruit, peanut butter, whatever…) and mix it all together, and try not to burn it too much. It’s generally difficult to manage to bake something that tastes bad. The challenge, for me, is not only making it taste good, but making it interesting.

    So, I submit for your consideration my latest creation, a birthday cake for my friend Jeff, who (at 27, mind you) is kind of obsessed with gerbils.

    Last year, Jeff (a physicist) got a Periodic Table of Cake for his birthday.  That was made of two different kinds of cake (lemon-creme and chocolate-covered-strawberry) cut into individual square cupcakes, frosted in a rainbow of colors, then assembled and decorated to look like a mini periodic table. (Extra effort: the frosting on “arsenic” was laced with well over 1/4cup of cayenne pepper. Spicy!)

    Jeff really enjoyed the lemon-creme from last year and asked for it again this year, so the gerbil cake started as a four-layer 9″x13″ lemon-creme cake with fresh lemon frosting.   My lemon cake is so easy it’s very nearly cheating: boxed lemon cake mix, lemon pie filling, and fresh lemon juice.  Too easy, and so delicious!  The fresh juice tempers the over-sweetness of boxed mix, and gives it a bright, tart lemon flavor.  For frosting, when using lemons I like to keep it simple to let the flavor shine: butter, confectioner’s sugar, and fresh-squeezed lemon juice.   For this cake, it was four 9″x13″ layers of cake and three layers of frosting holding it all together.

    Once baked and layered, I carved the assembled cake (admittedly, with a little bit of help from my roommate, who was better at achieving the curves) into the shape of an adorable little gerbil.  I frosted it with more lemon icing, (tinted a light kraft-brown with icing dye), and added a lemon-end nose, lemon-slice ears, and a lemon-garnish tail.  I used black decorator’s icing to add details – nose, eyes, stripes and claws – and, voila!  Gerbil cake!

    Gerbil cake!

  • Haiti Relief hot dog eating contest turns tragic

    Its not every day a young boy dies at a hot dog eating contest.  Especially a 13 year-old middle school student at a supervised Boys and Girls Club charity event.  Although the choking death appears to be an accident, the Police are investigating.

    Call me a conspiracy theorist – but a few things in this story don’t  add up.   First, is that the food these 12 young contest participants were eating makes no sense.  Apparently this wasn’t a contest to see how many hot dogs the kids could eat.  Rather, it was contest was a “game” to see who could finish a cooked hot dog and bun covered with whipped cream.  What the HELL?  Not Fear Factor, but not Great Eats either [Hats off to our EPIE winner!].

    Additionally, and weirder, the contest itself was part of a charity event to raise money for the Haiti quake disaster.  That’s weird isn’t it?  An eating contest as a part of an event to raise money for poor people to get. . .food. Lastly, the prize for the kids upon finishing the whip-cream-dog. . .is described as some “candy.”  As in – you kids finish your whip-cream-dog and we will give you some candy.

    That is just creepy. Although,I suppose back in the halcyon days of middle school I might have had a go.

    The only good news is that the event reported raising $150 for Haitian Relief.  Come to think of it. . .that buys a lot of hot dogs.

  • Won’t Somebody Pleeease Think of the Children!!!!!!

    Today I made a trip to one of my favorite Ann Arbor locations, Ahmo’s. I first laid eyes on Ahmo’s about eight years ago, and aside from the obnoxious guy behind the counter hitting on my wife it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Ahmo’s proudly states that they are “Home of the Chicken Gyro.” The truth is, they had me at chicken. Turn it into a gyro and you have a magical combination. Now, there may be better locations in the Ann Arbor area for Middle East fare (Jerusalem Garden and Ali Baba to name two), but Ahmo’s stands well on its own, and besides, they offer hoagies and subs so a direct comparison with the likes of Jerusalem Garden would be unfair. I was set to launch into a full blown review, but something at Ahmo’s caught my eye today, something I’ve been meaning to rant about for a while.

    The kids’ menu. Any parent who actually gives a damn what their kids eat must share my frustration. Never has more pedantic culinary puke been offered than what most restaurants provide for children. Ahmo’s, which serves the hallowed Chicken Gyro, along with traditional gyros, as well as falafel, delicious lentil soup and hummus, offers for kids the following: hot dog, chicken strips, and cheese sticks and fries. As difficult as it is to fathom, I have to assume there are parents who step up to order at Ahmo’s and say: “We’d like a Chicken Gyro, Falafel Pita, side of Tabouli salad, and Junior will have a hot dog and fries.” This is why I don’t wholly blame Ahmo’s for their kids’ menu. Sure, they need to try harder and offer a child size gyro or falafel, but I will not absolve American parents and their grotesque eating habits along with the inability to stimulate an interest in real food to their children. Ahmo’s is only doing what every other restaurant that offers chicken strips and corn dogs on their kids menu does. Clearly there is a market for this crap.

    In my previous life as a slave for the man, I had to deal with many oblivious parents. And I am well aquainted with the argument they would give: “But little Tyler and Madison don’t like that kind of food.” Well tough shit for Tyler and Madison. First of all, if you tried cooking a diverse selection of food at home for them, they probably would want to try a falafel. Second of all, did I miss the revolution where children took decision making power away from parents? Too many parents, whether it is about food or another issue, just don’t want to have the argument. I get it, I stay home with the kids and you definitely have to pick your battles. But food is about as important as it gets. Children shouldn’t become obese until they go off to college and gain 30 pounds by drinking a 12 pack of Natural Light and ordering Pizza House at 3am every night.

    I am well aware of the solution for the pathetic kids’ menu: Share your gyro or falafel with your kid. But I didn’t become a parent to have my children pilfering food off my plate. They are already sucking away all my time and energy, the least they can do is leave my gyro alone. So please, if you run a restaurant make an effort to diversify your kids menu. Don’t sell yourself short, if the Chicken Gyro is your specialty, than offer one for kids.