Things I've learned from making the Cherpumple

The Cherpumple is an affront to god, nature and pretty much everything else. It is a pie, baked inside a cake, then stacked three high and finally covered with cream cheese frosting. Each layer is made from a different pie: Cherry, Pumpkin and Apple. Each cake layer is also different, white for cherry, spice for Pumpkin and yellow cake for Apple. It originally came from http://www.charlesphoenix.com and after someone emailed it to me, I had to try it.

Today I made my third of these delicious monstrosities. The first two were super awesome, but the third experienced technical difficulties. I have learned from the process and feel that I need to share this with anyone who wishes to make this thing.

First thing: pies and cakes need to come from supermarkets. Home made cakes and pies from scratch have no place in cherpumple building. The cake needs to come from mixes, the more preservatives the better! Pies should be pre-made and dense. If supermarket bakery pies aren't available, then get the frozen ones. Bake them, cool them (in the freezer for time) and then bake them in the cake.

 9" pies work best in 9" springform pans. I tried using square pans and it just didn't work out as well. I haven't tried working in 9"x2" cake pans but I suspect that they are too small given the volume of the pie plus the cake and how it expands while baking.

Second thing: The cakes will have to be baked for longer than it says on the box. Its taken about an hour or more for each layer to bake. If the top still jiggles, bake it longer. The structural integrity is at stake if you do not. You can do all three at once and I usually bake it for an hour and then check each every 10 minutes after.

Last thing. Have a big enough cake stand or surface prepared. Something on a turntable would be ideal.  The cherpumple is really heavy. More so than you expect. The apple pie seems to be the weakest link. It is the one that will crumble. Be sure that you don't carve any of the pie away when you trim the cake or else it will fall.

What if it falls?

Put it in the fridge. Make it cold, it will help the thing congeal and stay together. On the last one, I had to put it in something to contain the cake so it wouldn't fall apart.

Will I make this again? Yes. It is the perfect desert for Turducken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken (and variations there of).
Are there more things to learn to make a better cherpumple? Absolutely. And as they come up I will share them, but for now, happy cherpumpling!

Gen-eral Thoughts.

Right now I am supposed to be writing a paper about Richard Serra's Drawing Retrospective but as I am earning a double major in Procrastination, I am writing this instead.

Just some "Gen"eral Thoughts I had over the last couple of hours....

1) The Dream Act. Children are stuck with their parents decision to come to the US illegally. Why should they be punished for that? If you are a stellar student, shouldn't you be given a chance to be a productive member of society (who pays taxes) as a college grad or member of the armed services, rather than being a maid/laborer paid under the table? Srsly!

To Qualify: I would like to say that on some things I am quite liberal and in other respects quite conservative. I don't like either party and think that most politicians are very silly. I'm also very close to the immigration issue with most of my family having come from Guatemala.

2) Is it wrong that my leather Jacket cost more than my wedding dress? The idea that a wedding dress is the most expensive piece of clothing you will ever wear is ridiculous. I want my most expensive piece of clothing to be the one that I will wear every day.

To Qualify: We had a small budget for SF though pretty standard for the rest of the country. However we could afford to have this budget. If I only had 300 for a wedding, I would have had a BBQ in the park. Just Saying.

3) I have so little time left to get everything done for school and work, yet I waste time doing unproductive things (like this blog that no one will read). I sometimes wish I were a machine that just did things like a Ford assembly line. That is the way I was taught I should be, but is that really the best thing? Just a thought.

I can't think of anything else so its back to my essay.

Fashion!

This morning I read this interview with Helena Bonham Carter in my People Magazine RSS feed. (Yes, I read People. You wanna make something of it?!?)

The King’s Speech star — andOscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress — Helena Bonham Carter is the first to admit she’s made a few fashion mistakes on the red carpet but that’s not stopping her from dressing up in non-traditional styles. “Sometimes I get it right and I sometimes I get it wrong,” Bonham Carter, 44, tells PEOPLE. “But fashion is all about having fun. I think fashion has been hijacked by the fashion industry creating rules on what one should wear and I feel like breaking the mold and seeing that the world won’t crumble.” Known for her eclectic fashion choices, Bonham Carter raised a few eyebrows by attending theGolden Globe Awards wearing one red and one green shoe simply because she wanted to. “Why not wear mismatching shoes? Who says we can’t? I was just having fun,” says Bonham Carter. “For me, fashion is all about fantasy and putting unlikely things together. That’s what I love. I genuinely love dressing up.” One person Bonham Carter praises is Lady Gaga for her daring fashion choices. “I love the way she dresses. She’s like a work of art,” she says. “Anybody who is inventive, different or has fun like her, I love and admire. I’m amazed that she’s able to stand up in some of those shoes she wears.” When asked what it’s like to be compared to the “Bad Romance” singer, Bonham Carter demurs, saying “I feel honored to be compared to her but I would probably be called Lady Haha. She’s fantastic.” So what can we expect on the red carpet at the Kodak Theatre come Feb. 27? “Maybe I will wear the exact same [Vivienne Westwood] dress I wore at the Golden Globes but with matching shoes,” she says with a big laugh. “Or put the shoes on my head!” – Paul Chi

Bonham-Carter is always dubbed the worst dressed, as is Tilda Swinton, but these people are some of the few who take chances with their fashion. You often see everyone wearing the same thing over and over again. Fashion is a means of self expression, a way to tell the world who you are (not who your stylist is).

Those are my two cents anyways.

Random link

http://www.arteaser.com/2010/11/artists-as-curators-two-shows-lots-of.html

Just a quick link from the art show I participated in at Bar Basic. They don't mention me by name, but then again, I'm an art nobody at this point. But that is Monkeynova and myself blurred out on the last picture.

yes there is a maymontt.com, Virginia....

With all this attention being paid to my drawings, I decided it might be a good idea to have a website of some sort. With me not being as html savvy as I would like, I decided to hire google to do my web pages. All in all, it didn't turn out too badly, I think. Maybe a little 1999 but, oh well.

There is a gallery slideshow, which is kinda cool, so visitors can see what I do. There's also a little blurb about me. Hopefully I don't sound too full of myself.

Maybe one day, I'll ask my mom to make me a real site, so I can be a real artist... but this should hold me through community college and maybe part way through art school, at least.

Check it out: www.maymontt.com

art shows

It looks like two pieces of my art are going up for sale.

The first has been donated to raise money for Rainforest

Action Network, to help stop rainforest deforestation. Its being entered in a silent auction, so hopefully *fingers crossed* it will sell and make some money for the cause.

The second is a show at a bar all about the 90's. They've told me I'm in but I've yet to actually drop off the piece for hanging. It should run from October through February. I will post the dates and info later.

Its very exciting. I hardly know what to do with myself!

commentary

So today I get this email saying I have a new comment on my blog. Now looking back at the last posting done almost 8 months ago, you can see I don't really do much writing in this blog anymore (Twitter is my new lord and master.)

The comment was regarding a blog post where I posted an essay I did for my English 1a class, Geek Love.

I thought the whole comment rather odd seeing that

1) it was nobody I knew

2) it was regarding something long since past (2007)

3) it was making a personal mockery of me

So this is a brief response to the person who made the comment, who will never see it, and probably is getting exactly what they wanted in the response from me:

i was very proud of going back to school and getting tested into the highest engllish class possible. while i know that what I wrote wasnt grammatically correct nor spellingly correct thw whole way through i very happy with the result of my essay, so suck it you fucking cowardly bastard!

I got an A on that paper and in that class. I don't know how I could possibly do better than that.

Thank You.