Category: baking

Ugly Cake

Ugly Cake was birthed from the Ugly Cookies I made over this summer while working at a bakery as a sugar cookie decorator. My decorating skills, when genuinely trying, were a solid O K but when I wanted to make a cookie to surprise my best friend/roommate I strived to make the most painful to look at cookie. Cowboy boot shaped hot pink sugar cookies with gaudy sprinkles, the cookie being at least 3 days old before decoration. I proposed a trail no.2 to my then ex boyfriend via ugly cookie and he accepted. The ugly cookies, SPECIFICALLY given when there is no event or holiday, is an ugly way to let someone know you genuinely give a shit, by making a cookie that represents the shit you give. It was a pick me up, along with a $5 bottle of wine, to any friend that I could throw love at. The ugly cookies were gifted to me from me as well.

Ugly Cake is Ugly Cookies but so much bigger and better, which makes the joke filled with more ugly love. The cake is not 3 days old but it is unbelievably dry because box mixes suck but realistically its the only way I have ever wanted to bake a cake. My grandma used to put mayo in her red velvet cakes and it made all of my malaise as a 5 year old subside, but of course I had no mayo when making this cake. Ugly Cake is intended to be shared with just yourself or a large group of people who mean something to you, or an individual who enjoys the ugly things in life.

 

Ingredients:

  1. Duncan Hines Red Velvet “Moist” (this is a lie) box cake mix
  2. 1 cup water
  3. 3 large eggs
  4. 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  5. Cream cheese icing
  6. Pink tube icing
  7. Icing decorating tips
  8. 8 in metal pan
  9. Any sprinkle types you are drawn to or that make you think of that person, but at least 3 kinds.

 

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350F.
  2. Drink the majority of the $5 wine. Be careful. Also do not drunkenly forget to wash your hands.
  3. Mix water, eggs, vegetable oil, and cake mix. The box has specific times for how long to mix but I don’t have a hand blender, I have a big wooden spoon and arm muscles. I mixed until there were no chunks.
  4. Grease the pan. Make it real greasy, because I sure didn’t and it’ll save you so much time. If you want it real ugly, rub some oil around in the pan with your fingers and sprinkle in some flour.
  5. Pour in batter. I think you’re supposed to only pour to half way.. but I poured to 3/4 the pan and it WILL overflow. This MIGHT light on fire in the bottom of your oven. but you won’t have to wash an extra pan afterwards so its wherever your priorities lie.
  6. Bake 25-30 minutes, look in and get scared, bake for 15 more minutes like an idiot. This may not be the mix’s fault that the cake is so dry…
  7. Remove from the oven, let cool for like 30 minutes or until you can touch the pan (this is unsafe advice but my momma still has her hands and I still have mine so touch at your own risk).
  8. Cut off the bubbled over part and eat this while you try to shake the cake out of the tin. Later, you may freak out that your tongue is dark red and your logic is impaired because of the wine but remember it is the red velvet cake scraps you ate.
  9. Use one of those icing spreader spatulas and thickly try to glue on the chunks that stayed stuck to the pan after you tried to use a knife to remove the upside down cake. This will pick up the red velvet chunks and crumbles, just keep spreading. I used a whole container of icing and part of another.
  10. While the icing is wet, dump the sprinkles all over the cake. pat the thick layers down sometimes to prevent fallout. This can be done in a design or just haphazardly. I personally love just dumping them wherever to make a mess.
  11. Apply the tip that is not a flower or star, just the regular hole, and hold in the cookie decorating way (look up a youtube video).
  12. Write whatever you want. Names, vulgarities, obscenities, your social security number, a penis, your dead dog’s name, a proclamation of love, your receipt number, the amount of money the person owes you, or any design you want. I wrote “Ugly Cake” and the ingredients in the cake.
  13. Share, or don’t.

Brickcakes

These are hangover pancakes. Not because they are super greasy and sweet, a large amount of carbs to satisfy the raging hangover demands, but because when the room is spinning and the slow creep of nausea threatens projectile vomiting these pancakes act as a brick in your stomach that absolutely will not allow hangover puking. This pancake rock is the intestinal glue, your bowels will not move for days. When I was vegan I tried to follow fads, including the buckwheat protein pancakes that frequented annoying fitblr vegan accounts. I am sure these over packed aesthetically rustic with a blueish filter pancakes are fine when made by someone who is proficient at pancake making… but more than likely they smiled through the pain and constipation and thicc floor-tile-bread-pancakes. If someone tells you that it is a Good Idea to make pancakes with buckwheat and bananas from scratch, ask how their blog is from over your shoulder as you run far away.

The only way to make this recipe more tragic is by adding peanut butter as the mortar to the bricks. Please, just make some Bisquick box pancakes. Forget the social media subcultures crying out for their iron to be pumped, their Get Big Stay Big, and their brickcakes to be Totally Protein Packed to Rebuild That Temple of a body after totally waking up at 5am to run a 5k. No buddy.

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup of Buckwheat Flour (run away now)

2 very ripe bananas (one of the only decent things I learned from fad health trends)

Almond or soy milk (Don’t ask me how much, just nervously splash it in until you think you’re a little screwed.)

2 TBSP coconut oil

Some (? I don’t know, feel it out) ground flax seed meal

Chia seeds, as much as you can stand

1 TSP ground cinnamon

Some vanilla extract

Brown sugar? Nutmeg? Blueberries? Whatever, pancakes are pretty versatile but you have the freedom of knowing these will already suck.

 

Directions:

*** If anyone tells you to BAKE pancakes look at their quality of character and determine if you REALLY want this type of negative influence in your life.***

  1. Mash the 2 bananas well, no chunks should be in the baby food.
  2. Mix all of those things together.
  3. Let sit for 5 minutes, you can pretend this will make them fluffy.
  4. Heat a pan with oil in it (but not TOO hot, I don’t know your stove, but half way turned knob?).
  5. Scoop (or pour, if you want frisbees) in the batter.
  6. Let one side cook until there are holes in the surface of the top of the pancake and its not as gushy.
  7. Flip.
  8. Wait a while, but make sure it doesn’t smoke or anything. I don’t know y’all are competent adults just nervous check the underside frequently.
  9. Continue until all batter is used.
  10. Please do not use sugar free maple syrup to top with, you deserve better.

Soggy Bottom Blueberry Cobbler

Soggy Bottom Blueberry Cobbler is how you get pity from your once future in-laws. This is how to make people look at you like your dog just died. This is how your dog dies. This recipe summons the ancient gods to protect your cobbler in the oven and (spoiler) they fail. Soggy Bottom Blueberry Cobbler is the first attempt and first ugly public failure I have performed in my career of sub-par cooking. This soup doesn’t even taste good. There are no golden brown flaky criss-crossed crusts that steam beautiful golden ambrosia aromas to your family on Thanksgiving. The crusts will without a doubt sink to the bottom of the cobbler, you will cry, and there will be a 3/4 lake of blueberry pie filling left over.

This recipe embarrassed me so badly that I closed the lid on the uncleaned, mostly filled glass dish, zipped that baby up in the insulated travel bag, and left her on my kitchen shelf for exactly a year. Turn back now. Buy a Walmart pie, throw the box away, pop that sucker in the oven for a couple minutes and lie. Lie because it’s easier than presenting this monstrosity of a cobbler.

I used a recipe from my mom that was a pretty easy blackberry cobbler recipe and tried to make it vegan last minute on Thanksgiving day three hours before a family lunch. Do not take this to any serious family event. Or do, if you want to prank yourself.

 

Ingredients:

1 Cup all-purpose flour

1/2 Cup sugar (In this house we use bleached sugar none of that fancy bone-free sugar)

1 TBSP of baking powder (I stole this from my roommate)

1 Cup Almond milk (or whatever you got)

1/3 Cup of vegan butter melted  (this is gonna be what kills your bank since its like $5 per 1/4 cup)

1 Can of blueberry pie filling. (Whatever size you can get your hands on and maybe an extra can just incase because I got scared and didn’t measure.)

 

Directions: Oven

  1. Grease up a glass dish. I know there are specifics about depth and whatnot but it will suck anyways so just pick your favorite.
  2. Preheat to 350 degrees.
  3. Mix dry ingredients, warm milk.
  4. Add milk. Get nervous because its probably clumpy so add more. Once you mess that up, add the butter for a good ‘ol greasy blob.
  5. Empty one can of pie filling into glass dish, maybe part of another. Eat whatever is left of the second can. Its probably fine I don’t think vegans get salmonella so the batter is probably fine too. (I am not a doctor, this is not medically accurate.) It’ll all be fine, have faith.
  6. Pour the batter on top, try to make it an even coating. This is frivolous, but allows the maintenance of the delusion that you’re a good baker.
  7. Bake for 35-40 minutes but since you’ll be rushing because you did not plan for this make sure you keep opening the oven to make sure its baking. I promise, letting all the heat out will help.
  8. Once taken out of the oven, the cobbler is supposed to cool a little before serving, but make sure before it gets the chance you smack a travel lid on that bad boy and zip her up in a carrying case.
  9. Store in the floor board of the car.
  10. Drive 45 minutes.
  11. Present to your significant other’s family. The crust will be floating under all of the pie filling and you will have a delicious blueberry moat that tastes like fake pie and not actually good at all.
  12. Do not cry when your partner’s grandpa eats the soggy bottom cobbler and says its some good blueberry soup.
  13. When you get home, zip it up and never open the container again for at least a year to let the bacteria fester in your shame.
  14. Once a year has passed, when you are ready, remove dish from the zipper and velcro casket and burry in the back yard for the worms to finish off your black mold shame.
  15. Enjoy!