Deck-orate your cakes with icing Fa la la la la, la la la la. Make them look nice and enticing Fa la la la, la la la la.
Force them on your friends and neighbours. Fa la la, la la la, la la la. Cry if they refuse your labours. Fa la la la la, la la la la!
If the season has you cringing, Fa la la la, la la la la.
Deal with that through constant binging. Fa la la la la, la la la la.
If your cake looks quite despondent Fa la la, la la la, la la la.
Cover that shit up with fondant. Fa la la la la, la la la laaaaaaaaaaaaa!
And… It’s not just the season of the diabetic coma. It’s also the season of forgiveness. This means that if you make an abortion of a cake ruining one of the holidays’ most beloved characters (to protect the innocent, we’ll just call him Budolph), Jesus will forgive you.
He won’t be happy about it, but He’ll let this one slide.
You may have noticed that this is not cake. But in the spirit of Christmas we decided to show compassion to other Christmas treats. Peppermint Bark is delicious all year round, but if you pull out a hunk of it in June, your friends will all know that those candy canes have been sitting in your pantry for six months. That’s right, they’re onto you. Lucky for us it is Christmas time! Hark! The bark cometh!
Chocolate. Yes.
If this doesn’t turn you on a little you may be reading the wrong blog.
SMASH!
This step is the main difference between Peppermint Bark and regular tree bark.
And lo, the angel of the flour appeared before them, and the glory of the sugar shone around them, and they were sore afraid. But mostly hungry.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold.
I bring you tidings of great flavor, which shall be to all people, if you properly combine the ingredients and bake at 375 degrees.
For unto you is baked this day in the city of Hogtown a series of Christmas cakes which belittle this most beautiful and sacred of holidays.
And this shall be a sign unto you: ye shall find dragees, which are actually quite difficult to come by.
And I command thee to crush candy canes into buttercream icing, and cover it with chocolate ganache, creating a holy trinity of Christmas flavors. And when our powers combine, we become Captain Planet. No…wait. Ok, forget that last bit. Just make a holy Christmas trinity.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising cake and saying:
Glory to eggs in the highest, and on earth good cake toward girls.
The only reason it is acceptable to become a year older is because it is tradition to mark this horrendous occasion with a delicious cake. Birthdays, the reason cake became a celebrity.
On particularly shocking milestone birthdays, the only way to seek consolation is in a cake so absurd it ceases to make any sense at all. There is neither rhyme nor reason. There is neither here nor there. There is just cake. This cake.
Happy 25th birthday… You poor bastard.
Cake is the ruler of all brunch. He sits on his throne, mocking his subjects.
Looks like mangled carcass. Just like the soul after 25 years.
So delicious. So melancholy. We can't outrun time (especially after eating cake.)
Sometimes, when you don’t know people, it’s good to present them with a gift the first time you meet with them. This makes them feel slightly awkward and uncomfortable, which will increase your confidence. It’s especially good if you give them a very personalized gift which clearly took a lot of effort. This makes them scared of you in a ‘Swimfan/Stalker’ type way, which means that they will compliment you incessantly in the hopes of never seeing you again, or they will be very willing to acquiesce to any of your demands, in the hopes of placating you and not sending you into one of your ‘Hulk-like black moods’. And if the gift is edible, all the better. This will force them to have their hands full so as to enable you to hug them without resistance, and causes them to have to eat in front of you, which gives you all the power.
Well, that’s what we did with the Toronto cast of Altar Boyz, anyway.
Note the fear in their eyes.
It’s really all just common sense.
Note: Ok, so really Max’s brother is the guitarist in this hit theatrical production, and so the offering was presented as just a nice (and delicious) gesture. However, Max sat through the production regularly thinking about how she might have terrified the entire cast and crew with what surely appeared as obsessive love, showing up for the first time with a cake, a knife, and a demonic gleam in her eyes. Next stop, Broadway! Watch out, cast of West Side Story.
Sometimes there are bullies. What do bullies do? They prey on the weak, the scared and the delectable.
When Mickey set foot onto a new film set, she felt like a kid on the first day at a new school. Everybody knew each other, they had their lunch table cliques, and all she wanted to do was fit in. Luckily she possesses a magical ability that tricks people into being friends with you! The ability to nervously spew a ridiculous cake invention on the spot, followed by a promise to produce said cake on set the following work day… Oops. Maybe lucky is the wrong word.
The conversation may have gone something like this: “Hey big scary camera guys, sorry I’m in your way all the time! To make it up to you I will bring you a cake! Yeah sure I can make cake. I make cake real good all the day long. What kind of cake? Um. Yeah. My specialty? Um. A chocolate chip banana bread? Yeaaaah with frosting! Peanut butter butter cream frosting! YEAAAAH! And um… CHOCOLATE GANACHE!”
Woah. Can it be done?
Hells yeah it can! Watch this!
Peanut butter butter cream!
Chocolate ganache filling!
Chocolate ganache topping!
Banana chips and chocolate covered banana chips!
ANGEL SOUNDS!
It’s true what they say: The way to a bully’s heart is by throwing a cake in his hands and running away.
“Best...cake...ever!” – Jay Greenslade (Bully #2)
Footnote: It isn’t right to give into the threats of bullies. Here at Max & Mickey’s we know this. We just like making cakes, and any excuse to do so works for us.
Mickey’s Footnote: While I agree that one shouldn’t give in to the threats of bullies, they did threaten to slam my fingers in the slate repeatedly and run over my feet with the dolly if I didn’t bring the cake to set. Just sayin’.
What do you get when you cross two parts chocolate, two parts cream, and one part butter?'
Five parts awesome. And then a heart attack.
But mostly lots of awesome.
The Joy of Baking.com has this to say about ganache: ‘The origins of ganache are debatable but it is believed to have been invented around 1850. Some say it originated in Switzerland where it was used as a base for truffles. Others say it was invented in Paris at the Patisserie Siravdin.’
Fascinating. But even more fascinating? It’s cream, chocolate, and butter. And shiny. We think that’s really all we need to know.
We never really intended to enter this forbidden city where fat and sugar come together as one, the Land of Ganache. But once we heard about it, its sweet siren song was too much to resist. Plus, it is really fun to make and tastes like angels are dancing on your palate. It combines not only three of our favorite food groups, but also the thrilling process of slowly watching something heat up, dumping it on top of something, waiting, and then (MAGICALLY!) seeing something delicious appear as if out of nowhere!
The addition of this incredible substance to our repertoire takes us into bold new frontiers, in the realms of both glazes, and fillings. These are exciting times. Delicious times. Chocolate filled and covered times.
The bigger, the pinker, the sparkly-er, the cakey-er, the frosting-er, the better! Little girls don’t care how tacky, how gaudy or how obscenely covered in fondant layers shaped like flowers. They want cake. They love cake. We can respect that.
When faced with the challenge of building a cake for a six year old’s birthday, you can bet that we, your fair cakestresses, jumped all over it, and a little bit in it… as in, in the frosting… mmmm buttercream tinted pink.
We caked for days and nights and finally produced what we think to be our most fantabulous cake to date! After crafting its pink chocolate lollipops and rolling its colourful fondant balls the cake was finally ready to be presented to the client.
And what did her highness think?
Full success! High five! Until next time cake children...
It’s fall, you can smell it. The thing about fall, is that no matter how long it’s been since you last had to go to school, the fall prompts this uncontrollable urge to buy school supplies and causes you to have anxiety dreams about being late for class, naked.
For some, fall is a continuation of the monotonous life you lead all year round but colder and with better jackets. For others fall brings brand new grownup stresses, hence the following cake.
A dear friend of the blog is embarking on a journey into a land that we know nothing about, the land of “the law.” We assume there are standard motivational sayings to prepare humans for scary new jobs in shiny buildings downtown, but we prefer to speak the language of cake.
Rumour has it that lawyers need many important leather-bound volumes about law and other such important topics. So our gift to you is just that, a leather-bound volume containing everything you need to know about EVERYTHING.
Chapter One: There can be no crime without delicious intent.
Read it thoroughly, its contents will be invaluable to your success in your field.
I am oddly attracted to you. Is it your chiseled face? Your stern, yet kind demeanor? Or just your proximity to cake?
I suppose I’ll never know.
But perhaps the mystery is part of the appeal, my spatula-wielding king. You are the fondant to my buttercream. You are the poppy seeds to my lemon cake. I want you to dirty ice all my layers, and cream me at low speeds until frothy.
NOTE: We’ve subtitled this chapter as ‘the First’, because we believe the ‘Cake As Bribery’ technique will feature frequently in both this blog, and our lives. In fact, when we inevitably give everything else up to become professional cake-mistresses (Cake Girls? Cakeheads? Cake-y-Break-y Hearts? Cake Sluts?), the smallest available size of cake will be known as our ‘Bribery’ size.
We modern girls have to use every weapon we have at our disposal in this harsh, work-a-day world. Our brains. Our sexuality. Our baking skills. Mostly the latter. Especially when one’s sexuality is compromised by constantly eating cake. And one’s face is often smeared with cake. And one is only turned on by cake. So we bake to forget our troubles, and to celebrate our accomplishments. To kiss today goodbye, and to point towards tomorrow. Wish me luck, the same…to….you…..we also often listen to musicals.
Mickey lives in a wonderful apartment, in a great part of the city. However, one thing is sadly missing: a kitty. Her otherwise-pretty-great landlords said it wasn’t an option. But doesn’t that sound more like a challenge then a refusal? Being two highly educated girls with plenty of moxie, we took it as such. So, upon being reunited after being separated by an ocean for three weeks while Mickey traveled Europe, we came together to travel halfway across Toronto to spendtwo hours and a lot of money at Bulk Barn, and to win her landlords over, come hell or high water.
So we made a kitty-cat cake! Wouldn’t you let us have a pet if we gave you this cake?
We thought so.
UPDATE:Mickey's landlords are clearly super-human life forms and/or robots, impervious to the charms of frosting and batter. They ignored the cake and her for a while, and then came out and said, 'no'. Just 'no'. Honestly, who walks by a mysterious box in their hallway for hours (nay, days) before finally opening it? And then, who opens the box, finds an amazing cake, and says NO!? Who could resist such a beautiful kitty-cat cake, clearly made with loving precision by two equally beautiful girls, one of whom has been an excellent tenant, about which they can have no complaints?
We are slightly disillusioned by the unhappy discovery that cake does not win all battles. It is equal in sadness and confusion to Max’s recent terrifying realization that there are problems that even Miss Vicki can’t solve. However, we are daunted, but not undone.The solution? More cake!
P.S. Mickey went ahead and got a damn cat anyway! His name is Link.
