Peony Moss: June 2010 Archives

When deviancy from the ethos becomes the ethos, calling virtue bourgeois, the servant is deprived of his royal dignity as a child of God, and the king is absolved of his duty to revere those he governs. --Father Rutler

The First Things article everybody's linking to today:

There is nothing wrong, or course, with fantasy or with what C.S. Lewis called Sehnsucht, the inconsolable longing in the human heart for "we know not what." What makes Kinkade’s cottage painting so dispiriting is that rather than being created to challenge or even inspire, to evoke in some way the desire for Heaven, it’s intended only to comfort. It’s sentimental.

Sentimentality, as literary critic Alan Jacobs says in a recent interview with Mars Hill Journal, encourages us to “suspend judgment and reflection in order to indulge deliberately in emotion for its own sake.” Reflection reinforces and strengthens true emotions while exposing those feelings that are shallow and disingenuous. Sentimentalists, however, try to avoid this experience of reality and try to keep people from asking questions by giving them pleasing emotions they have not earned. The shameless manipulation of our emotions, says Jacobs, is the ultimate act of cynicism.

One of the commenters links to this article, "The Painter of Lite™"

Sentimentality, [Mark] Jefferson admits, can be harmless. A penchant for Hallmark cards and posters of kittens playing with balls of yarn is not in itself a mortal sin. But when the misrepresentation of the world takes on a particular consistency and brittleness, darker consequences are possible. “The unlikely creature and moral caricature that is someone unambiguously worthy of sympathetic response has its natural counterpart in a moral caricature of something unambiguously worthy of hatred,” Jefferson concludes.

Which is why some observers have noted a relationship between sentimentality and brutality....

Sound familiar?

"To live in perpetual want of little things is a state, not indeed of torture, but of constant vexation."

--Samuel Johnson

There's a Care Calendar out there calling my name, so I'm racking my brain trying to come up with a good freezer meal and coming up with... nothing.

What do you recommend? The ideal meal would be something easily reheated in the oven (or even the microwave), moderate in the way of carbs, and peanut/ tree-nut free. I think other folks are going to have the Italian angle covered, so I'd like to stay away from the lasagna/ baked pasta arena.

Any ideas?

Over the years, St. Anthony has located many lost items for my family and friends, often in rather creative ways. Yet there are some things that are never found...

A nice article on how St Anthony of Padua, whose feast day is today, became the go-to saint for finding lost things.

P.S. Saint Anthony, Hammer of Heretics, Doctor of the Church, Friend of Jesus, please help me find that special pen that went missing in April, and count it not among the Objects that Should Stay Lost. With sincere hope, your little sister in the faith, Peony Moss

After I posted my Seven Quick Takes at Jen's, I followed one of the links back to this post at "So Much to Say, So Little Time", in which the writer mentions that her Wilton instructor was recommending canned icing.

I personally think that the Wilton instructor deserves the stocks or the ducking stool for that idea, so in the comments section I did a little ranting and raving. (At this moment it's still in the moderation queue.) Here's what I posted:

Here via 7 quick takes, and your “Wilton instructor” is full of something inedible. And I say this as an alumnus of the course as taught at Michael’s! Canned icing is not only disgusting tasting, it’s not the right consistency for cake decorating! Ick!

There’s three kinds of cake icing used in the Wilton classes: buttercream (the “basic”), royal (dries hard, used for elaborate make-ahead flowers) and fondant (that dough-like stuff often purchased in packages). I don’t think they get to royal and fondant until Classes 2 and 3.

Buttercream: Sometimes in the class they recommend that you use buttercream icing made entirely from shortening because it’s cheap, stable, and reusable. I wouldn’t use an all-shortening icing on a real cake, though, unless you were planning to serve it in Iraq or someplace like that.

For an actual cake, here’s a good basic recipe:

Wilton Buttercream; I recommend the following adjustments:

– This recipe makes just enough to ice and lightly decorate a standard cake recipe. You won’t have much room for error (and won’t have enough to make roses or basketweave.) If you double it, you’ll have plenty and you can freeze the rest.

– Beat the butter and flavorings together first and just a dab of the milk. Don’t bother with the “colorless” vanilla unless you want a truer white icing.

Add the sugar. I have the best results with Domino’s. The longer you slowly beat your icing, the better it will taste. (Stand mixer helps.)

Slowly add your milk a tablespoon at a time, watching the consistency of the icing.

– I don’t like using the corn syrup unless I am making thin icing for writing.

– The higher the fat content of the milk, the better the recipe will turn out. Half and half (the real stuff, not soy) or even cream is great.

– Shortening makes the recipe stable, stiffer, and a purer white. Butter makes it tastier, a little softer, and a less pure white. You can adjust your ratio — so if you double, you could use 1/2 cup shortening and 1 1/2 cups butter. Keep the heat of the day in mind, and the fact that butter has more water in it than shortening. I wouldn’t use all butter until you’ve had more practice.

– Consistency is important! As you beat your icing, watch its consistency. Stiff icing is about the consistency of Spackle. If you’re making roses, this is what you want, so when you attain STIFF consistency, take some out of the bowl and set it aside. Add a bit of milk until you get to MEDIUM, which is what you want for your shells, stars, etc, and is the consistency of regular peanut butter (Jif, not the organic peanut butter )

THIN is what you want to ice the cake and to do outlining, writing, teeny dots of yellow in the middle of flowers, Corelli lace, etc. It is the consistency of pudding. I only use corn syrup when I’m doing writing and lace. I’ve been known to use butter-only for thin icing and butter-shortening for the medium and thick consistencies.

Your icing will never look as smooth and perfect as it does in the Wilton books, so don’t stress. To do the photo shoots, they use royal icing on Styrofoam cake dummies and then sand the icing to make it perfectly smooth.

Hope this helps! This is a great recipe to get you going with cake decorating, and I’ve had nothing but compliments making it. For flowers, I’ve used it for drop flowers, roses, and mums (and made them ahead of time and frozen them and then put them on the cake.)

For chocolate icing, add cocoa powder and adjust the consistency with cream.

To make black icing, start with chocolate and then add the black color.

For red, don’t bother with any color but No-Taste Red.

“Rose Petal Pink” is a lovely subtle pink color. The other pinks are Barbie bright. You can also tone down colors using Ivory — nice effects.

Oh, you can also add meringue powder to stablize your icing. Use 1 Tbsp/ recipe.

You can make and color your icing in advance; just store it in the fridge and then pull it out the morning you’re going to decorate. Keep in mind that your icing colors will get a big deeper over time.

Crisco will give you better results than generic shortening.

Experiment with extracts — I love, love, love 1/8 tsp almond extract in my icing! Coconut is delish as well. When I said “don’t bother with colorless vanilla” I meant to use regular vanilla if that’s what you prefer

Hope this helps,

Peony Moss

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For advanced, Rose Levy Berenbaum is a pro baker who has a recipe for Italian Meringue Buttercream that is supposed to be good for piping. I’ve never tried it myself, but the one time I used a similar recipe just to frost a cake, the icing was so tasty I nearly put my head in the bowl to get every last molecule.

--1--

We did it! The Virginia Mosses moved last week and are now unpacking. Now I need a nickname for the new place. I do plan to do a garden, but not until next month...

--2--

'cause at the end of this month we're off on a road trip to visit my parents.

--3--

Helpful hint: If you live in Virginia, DO NOT forget to renew your driver's license. If you do, when you go to the DMV, make sure you bring your driver's license (and your marriage license, if you changed your name when you got married) because your previous driver's license is no longer good enough proof of your identity.

--4--

And don't forget your cell phone, so that when your child gets sick at school you'll find out about it right away and not when you return home to get your driver's license and your marriage license and find the parent you listed as your emergency contact using a Band-Aid and a used envelope to leave a note on your front door.

--5--

Now that we're back in a house with a yard, the rhubarb chronicles will begin again! Remember those four plants I was growing back in the PGMP? They came with us when we moved. One went to my pal Iris and two lived on my back deck in whiskey-barrel planters, where one died and the other two hung on but failed to thrive.

But now I've got a nice spot of ground for them, and they're going in this weekend! Pie for sure next year!

--6--

I made a strawberry rhubarb pie last week.

Oh. My.

Rhubarb pie really is an amazing restorative. "Maybe things aren't as bad as you thought."

--7--

First Zappos purchase!

I LIKE:

Malindi by Crocs

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