Category: Uncategorized

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.

SpaghettiWestern Nachos

These nachos are actually kind of really good as long as you do not look them in the eye. These are to be eaten in a dark room with people who can stand the smell or who are also partaking in the massacre of nachos. There is absolutely no claim to cultural knowledge in this recipe WHAT SO EVER. I am lucky I can make pasta without obliterating it, but this was birthed from my inability to follow the instructions on a Texas Toast box. Prepare yourself for the farts that will ensue, it’s best to eat this at the witching hour or later and sleep off the repercussions. These nachos are a college student’s wet dream, and a cowboy has probably never thought of this.

This recipe is an original creation, no corners cut, inspired by one episode of iCarly from when I was 12 (the spaghetti tacos episode) and the desperate scramble to save brick hard Texas Toast. I am jealous and also sympathetic for those who decide to make this, but like shaving your head, everyone should make a monstrous bastardization of food at some point in their lives and enjoy it without regret.

 

Ingredients:

  1. Spaghetti (a whole box)
  2. Salt (for the noodle water)
  3. Pasta sauce, I used off brand cheapest on the shelf pasta sauce (not the meat kind, that stuff is disgusting)
  4. Santitas white corn tortilla chips
  5. Tostitos Salsa Con Queso (you will use the whole jar, accept it)
  6. Small can of jalapeño slices
  7. Texas Toast (I prefer the garlic and 4 cheese kind, but different strokes)
  8. Black beans (canned)
  9. Hot sauce (but god not sriracha you tasteless dirt eaters)
  10. Lettuce
  11. Tomatos (diced)
  12. Onions (sautéed)
  13. Bbq jackfruit (I recommend not this one. It was almost insufferable but enough cheese and distraction helped. If vegan/vegetarian, the morning star steak strips would be much better. If you eat meat, throw whatever you want in there it can handle it.)

 

Directions:

  1. Put the Texas toast in the oven on a sheet for whatever time and heat the box says.
  2. Leave the toast in for like 3 extra minutes or something because it is sensitive and will give the slight char that leads to the necessary use of all other ingredients.
  3. Bring salted water to an aggressive boil.
  4. Add pasta to boiling water, I recommend breaking the noodles. This means they will not be as satisfying to twirl on a fork but they wont light on fire over the edge of the pot.
  5. In 5-8 minutes the spaghetti should be easy to cut with a fork, drain.
  6. Dump spaghetti onto large plate on top of the toast.
  7. Pour on spaghetti sauce and queso.
  8. Add diced tomatoes, sautéed onions, beans, lettuce, and drained jalapeño slices.
  9.  Heat the jackfruit in a greased pan or in the microwave and add on top (not much cooking required), or just throw this part away it kind of sucks.
  10. Stab the tortilla chips into the mixture that will now look like the bottom of a dumpster.
  11. Add as much hot sauce as desired.
  12. Pray for your soul and maybe your butthole then eat.

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.

Jambalaya From A Box

This recipe is a bastardization of any form of jambalaya my mom made for a family meal. There is no way on god’s green Earth would I let this be fed to family members, lest I be cast into the pits of gnashing teeth and writhing souls of the women who could not cook for their husbands. This was one attempt of many I made in trying to show my boyfriend the type of food I grew up on, but a college student income is just enough for the mix-box-with-water-ignore-for-30-minutes-on-stove type of meal, not that good stuff my mama made for us.

Box Jambalaya is not the pretty summer aesthetic green grass bright sunshine turquoise blue bowls and glass dish ware on a yellow quilt recipe. I had one turquoise blue bowl in the whole house, it was my roommate’s and I burned a hole through the bottom. Only serve this dish in a dark room at 12am (or later) when your partner has not eaten all day, with a good episode of The Simpsons on. Paired best with stinky feet on the couch and the batteries from the fire alarm on the table.

This will not change your life and is only a recipe I swear by if you like ruined pans.

 

Ingredients:

1 Box of Jambalaya mix (I used Zatarain’s)

2.5 Cups of water

1 TBSP vegetable oil (unless you really love the crispy inch thick tar-like substance on the bottom of your pan like I sure do)

2 Vegetarian Sausages (I used something that tasted like dog food)

 

Directions: Stovetop

  1. Slice the vegetarian weenies in that long oval way that makes beanieweenies so fancy.
  2. Pan-fry the weenie disks. Take as long as you feel necessary, and if its real meat take as long as needed for the worms to die.
  3. Remove from pan, put it somewhere like a bowl or your hands if they’re calloused enough to handle it. Hands not recommended.
  4. Mix all ingredients into whatever pot will hold ’em, I recommend eyeballing it. If it boils over you wont know anyways.
  5. Bring to boil. Lower heat but keep the flame just a little too angry.
  6. Walk away for 25 minutes. Don’t look back. Whatever you do, do not stir. Maybe set a timer, or use whatever point in the Simpsons episode as a time marker. Maybe 40 minutes.
  7. At some point after the fire alarm reminds you that you have other obligations, turn the heat off and remove pot from burner.
  8. Use your strongest utensil to scrape the thick, blackened char and tasteless rice from the pot into a bowl. This may take a while, as charcoal rice tends to be rock solid and glued in a block of hateful positive space from the pot interior. The worms will be dead by now.
  9. Drown the char and bland rice/dog food weenie mixture in as much salt, hot sauce, pepper, and cajun seasoning that you can stand.
  10. Serve. Make sure the lighting is low and tastebuds are looking the other way. Enjoy!