Treats for Trannies!

Every Thursday night at Nowhere Bar in New York City, something amazing happens. A number of older crossdressers of all ages gather to dress up, mingle, drink, dance, and just be generally fabulous. Of course the music is great, too, and the DJ even tapes a runway down on the floor for the girls to strut it out.

Imagine going to a seedy dive bar in Hackensack in 1985. Big hair, light-up shoes, thick makeup, exposed corsets, micro-miniskirts, mesh, lace, pleather. It's all there on Thursday nights. Sure, it's entertaining, but I respect those gals more than I'm entertained by them. (Well, maybe it's a tie). They come from all over - Connecticut, Philadelphia, the Bronx, New Jersey, etc. Some of them actually take the bus to the bar, already dressed up! That takes way more balls than I have.

These ladies aren't your typical crossdressers. Actually, I'm not even sure "crossdressers" is the correct term to use. They aren't trans in any way that seems evident. It seems to me more like a party for men who like to wear womens' clothing and just be fabulous, but it's also not drag. It doesn't seem to be campy or ironic, either. I guess I only mention this because I'm sure that the term "Tranny Night," as my friends and I call it, is probably a misnomer. I am never really too clear about the correct terminology to use, so if you know, let me know. Until I find out for sure how these ladies refer to themselves (maybe just as "ladies"??), then I'll continue to call Thursday nights at Nowhere "Tranny Night."

I really dig these gals, so when John, my boss, told me there were having their third anniversary party at Nowhere last Thursday, I was thrilled. He asked me to bake up a few sweet treats. John, an accomplished (and hunky) chef, took care of all the savory food.

I decided to try the marshmallows again, but to photograph the process a bit more thoroughly this time. Since I had a ton of hazelnuts and raspberry jam left over from Valetine's Day, I made Linzer cookies again. Lastly, I wanted to try coconut macaroons - one of Charlie's favorites treats when we stop into any bakery in the city.

It was a bit gray and crappy outside that day, and for some reason I wanted to hear The Mamas and the Papas.


I also just got Kylie Minogue's new album, X, and it's pretty great. Upbeat, pop-y, dancey. I played this twice after the Mamas and the Papas.


Seemingly random musical choices, but I think my mood changed midday. Now onto the food...

Here are literally all of the ingredients I used. You can just mix up these few random ingredients in different ways, add heat, and suddenly you have a whole new product that not only tastes good, but can be really pleasing to the eye if you take some time with it. And the looks on peoples' faces when they first see it, then taste it, is extremely satisfying.

This is precisely why I love baking.



First again, the marshmallow. The first stage is dissolve some gelatin into water. I did this in the bowl of my mixer. Then you simply heat up some sugar, corn syrup, and water to 240 degrees (the "soft ball" stage of sugar). Looks like we're almost there:


Next you just turn on the mixer and slowly pour the hot mixture into the cold gelatin. Think of it like when you make Jello. You have to start with cold water, then add boiling water, then it sets as it cools. This is basically the same thing (as far as I can tell), but you also whip it to force air into it. This also cools it faster.

Here's what it looks like after 2 minutes:


And after about 7 minutes:


After 12 minutes, I added some red food color to make the marshmallow pink. I also added vanilla here to flavor it. You can see how sticky and thick it's getting by how well it still holds those stirring lines. It's like when you melt a bag of marshmallows to make Rice Krispy treats - warm and sticky and gooey:


After about 13 - 15 minutes, it's ready to be poured into a pan to set. It's so sticky!


I got this weird "select-a-size" cake pan at a yard sale upstate a few years ago with my friend Alberto. What a find - I've used it several times!


I wanted the marsmallow to have sharp corners, and casserole dish or lasagna pan wouldn't have worked. I visualized these things to be completely SQUARE. So in goes the marshmallow, and I spread it out with a greased spoon (so it didn't stick).


After 4 hours of setting (and a lot of mess in the kitchen), I flipped the sheet out and sliced it with a knife dusted with sugar. Perfect!


Those were ready to box and carry. Hurray!

For the macaroons, I made the actual coconut mixture the previous night, since it has to cool before shaping and baking. Also simple, you just cooked shredded coconut with a few eggs and sugar, then mix in some flavor. Cool, then shape and bake. It couldn't have been easier.


After 30 minutes in the oven, they're done. Crunchy outside, sweet and chewy inside. My mouth is watering as I type this!


Coconut is one of my favorite flavors. I don't know why I think this, but to me, it tastes like Spring is coming and warmer weather is on the way - and I LOVE that.

Of course, not content to just have coconut macaroons, I also used some leftover fancy chocolate to make a thick ganache to dip these things in. The bittersweet chocolate was so perfect with the sweet coconut. These were pretty awesome.


Here they are cooling by my window:


In the meantime, I was also working on the Linzer cookies. In a nutshell, I ground the hazelnuts, made the dough, chilled it, rolled it out, cut it into circles, chilled them again, and baked them. Chilling the cutout dough is the most important step in making the cookies pretty. They hold their shape and just come out beautifully.



Chilling out with the macaroons:


Pre-assembled cookies:


I wanted to drizzle white chocolate on the Linzer tops again, so I bought some very expensive white chocolate. It was so so so delicious, but I made big mistake. Thinking I wanted to make ganache, I mixed the white chocolate with a bit of warm cream to make a glaze, but it never hardened back up. White chocolate has a lot more fat in it, I guess. When you mix it with any other liquid, it can't re-solidify. For this reason, I dusted these with powdered sugar, which is the traditional way to make Linzer cookies anyway. They were very good, but I still prefer my white chocolate tops.



So I guess that's it for now. This was a long post, and all set to the tune of Fleetwood Mac. I'm off to Austin this week, then Mexico in two weeks. I'm not sure I'll have much time or reason to bake, but if I manage to get anything done, I'll certainly post it here.

Thanks for reading. Pie for now!

VD-08

Another year, another fun Valentine's Day with my friends. And trust me when I say that I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm of the group that thinks Valentine's day is essentially a "Hallmark holiday" created to make money off of the idea of "love." Not to say there's anything wrong with showing someone you love them on Valentine's day - it can be a fun day to do something romantic with your special shmoopy. I just don't get into the marketing aspect that it's all about now - singing cards, Looney Tunes balloons, single roses wrapped in a piece of plastic, teddy bear arrangements, etc. I guess with a nod towards silliness, those gestures can be fun, but people seem to take it all so seriously. I don't want to sound cynical or bitter, because I truly don't think I'm either. I just can't help but cast a critical (and realistic) eye on these marketing blitz days. I feel largely the same about Christmas, though not to such a strong degree. VD just seems like a very flimsy reason to celebrate something you should be celebrating all the time (if you are actually lucky enough to be in real love).

Anyway, I had a great dinner with my friends at arguably the oldest gay bar in New York City, Julius. I say "arguably" because no one seems to really know for sure, though Lampost Tom tried to convince us otherwise. They have cheap drinks, a jukebox loaded with Cher, and the best/cheapest burgers, fries, and onion rings in town. Four dollars gets you a thick burger, $1.50 for fries or onion rings, and extra $3 gets you a Stella to wash it all down. Combine that with good friends, interesting patrons, a peculiar smell, and a prostitute outside trying to light the place on fire with gasoline (no, not kidding), and you have my idea of a great Valentine's Day.

Oh, I have to let it be know that it really bugs me when people call it "ValentiMe's Day." I think there must be a correlation between people who say "Valentimes" and how many mylar Taz balloons they try to bring onto to a crowded subway car.

VD is one of those days that I really love baking for. I like taking the time to make really pretty, tasty, delicate things. Actually, I like baking for all holidays for a number of reasons:

1. It gives me a reason to bake, which I am struggling to find these days.
2. I can experiment with new ingredients that are in season.
3. My friends enjoy it.

Ok, so that's only three reasons, but I think they're good enough. Baking while I worked at Getty was easy because I had a willing audience all in one place. It's more difficult now that I don't have a dedicated tasting group that I can easily reach. That fact also makes it a bit more difficult to even find the motivation to spend the money on butter and fruit and flour and to put the effort into it.

I feel a bit guilty confessing this because I know I have so much support to bake and get a business going in one form or another. I think losing my job has had a bit more of an effect on me that I previously thought. I've fallen back into a habit of questioning everything I'm doing, and wondering why I do it. Second-guessing myself. Like, why do I bother continuing to buy camera equipment, or cake pans, or butter? Well, I like butter a lot, so I'd probably buy that anyway. I suspect a lot of this questioning is directly-related to financial worry and risk-taking. I've always been risk-averse, especially about money, and spending money on baking seems like a risk. I'm ashamed to admit that it even seems like a waste, now that my income has changed.

But as I've always known, and recently re-learned on my new favorite reality show, Make Me a Supermodel, you don't get anywhere if you don't take risks. For instance, Perry takes risks every week, and always comes out on top.


Go Perry! (I actually just wanted a reason to post a picture of Perry on this blog.)

Ok, enough of all that confessional bullshit. Just had to get it off my chest. Back to my VD baking project.

I decided to make little "sweet-treat packages" this year for my friends. I'd been wanting to try making marshmallows for some time now, and this seemed like a perfect excuse. Also, Linzer cookies (nutty cookies with a raspberry red "window" in the center) are very traditional and Valentine-y. Lastly, inspired by flower-sending Greg's love of the black-and-white cookies from the deli down the street, I opted to try making those.

I got into the spirit by watching the hilarious Valentine's Day episode of the Golden Girls. They mistakenly check into a nudist camp, but decide to try to get into it. They strip down and walk into dinner, only to find that everyone wears clothing to dine. HILARIOUS!



Ok, so the marshmallow was extremely simple and fun to make. It's basically just sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, water, and whatever flavor you like. I used vanilla, and also added a few drops of red food coloring to make them pink. You just mix it all up and spread it in a pan to set, then flip it out and cut it. I found scissors worked well, but they left jagged edges that I didn't like:





I'd like to try these again sometime and document the whole process. It's neat to see it all work. The chemistry is simple and fool-proof.

I wanted to make the black and white cookies small and bite-sized (and able to fit into a little box, so I tried. I think I overcooked them, though. Some came out too brown on the bottom and, in my opinion, too dry.



I pressed forward with decorating them, though. I added red to the white frosting to make black and pink cookies, and added a little heart decoration in the middle. I have tons of those little things from like 3 years back. The pink frosting is just water, powdered sugar, and a bit of lemon juice, while the chocolate side is actually ganache.



I was feeling a bit impatient making these, and I think it shows. They looked sloppy, but they tasted alright. Not great, but not bad, either.

Lastly were the Linzer heart cookies. I love Linzer cookies and tarts simply because they taste good and are not too sweet. They're usually topped with powdered sugar, but again, to cut the sweetness (and to make them easier to transport), I topped them with drizzled white chocolate. It's a sturdy, pretty, and tastier way to go, if you ask me.

Here they are prebaked:


And here are some pictures of post-baked Linzer heart tops:


And bottoms:


And my work space (I need more counter top!):


Here's a nice little assortment photo. The little cookies on the top right were the cut-outs of the Linzer hearts. I baked them and at the last minute decided to dip them in white chocolate and coat them in sugar. And honestly, I think they were the best tasting thing in the box!


The final product, ready for delivery (and the end result of a totally fun crafternoon):




One thing I thought once I had these boxed up and ready to go was that THIS is what unemployment looks like. I mean, if I was in senior citizens home, the only difference is that I'd be doing this with popsicle sticks instead of cookies.

So here we go! (These were all taken on my new phone. Well, except the one of Greg, obviously).

One box went to Greg in LA:


Which he received FIVE days later, thanks to FedEx's sorry-ass delivery procedures:


Then to Matt:


Next, one to John, who was home sick for the day:


And Pailo:


I stopped by Nowhere to give one to my boss, John, too, but I forgot to take a picture. Doh!

Then uptown to Bianca:


And Charlie:


One to Randy, whom I also forgot to take a picture of. Here's one of him anyway (on the right):


And finally one for Steve, my roommate:


I felt like the Valentine's fairy, delivering fat and sugar all over the city.

Here are a few other pics from my VD night, taken on my phone. They're random, but I think you can deal.

Bryant Park


Charlie in Times Square


Guy with a cat on his head


Female Trouble
"We rarely eat any form of noodle, Dawn."


"Female Trouble" was a fantastic way to end a night!

So that's it for this VD. I wonder what I'll be doing next year at this time...

Up next - treats for trannies!

Thanks!

VD

Valentine's Day post coming shortly...

Group effort

Today is my first day of unemployment. So far, so good. And what a great day to be off - I woke at around 8 to a heavy, heavy rain. I could hear it on the roof above me (my bedroom ceiling is the roof of the building). If nature hadn't been calling so early, I'd have stayed in bed for a bit longer, but hey - that's the one call you can't send to voicemail, you know? I had a bit of a hangover from celebrating too hard last night (only my very close friends know the real story). But after a cup of coffee, a few episodes of the Golden Girls, and breakfast with my pal Matt, I was feeling back up to snuff.

Also, these very nice flowers from my extremely thoughtful new friend in LA, Greg, helped tremendously:

(Thanks again. This made my week.)

I suspect the reality of being actually unemployed hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe it will on Monday. Maybe not. Whatever the case, I do feel inclined and motivated to stay very productive. I've been wanting to write this post all week, but things were just too crazy, until today. So here we go.

Last Saturday was my friend Pailo's birthday. He turned 32 again. For the 6th time. He had a little party at Nowhere and I wanted to make him some cupcakes. I decided to go with a traditional idea, but tweaked for grown-ups - basic yellow cake with chocolate frosting, but with a vanilla bean in the cake and chocolate ganache for frosting instead of buttercream. I prefer ganache to almost all types of frosting because it can be as sweet or not-sweet as you like. With buttercream, you absolutely must load it up with sugar to make it more stable, and I really don't have that much of a sweet-tooth.

First, a bit of music. I played a mix that was heavy on three albums.

For a beat:


Because it's cool:


For the banjo stuff:





This is the previously mentioned, flower-sending Greg from LA. He's a very talented photographer, and as it turns out, he's a fantastic baking assistant.


I used a simple cake recipe from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. I added the vanilla bean and cut down on the vanilla extract, and I thought I'd really be able to taste a difference, but no. In the end, I had to add an extra pinch of salt and even more vanilla extract than the recipe even called for. The batter tasted a bit too much like flour without it. Oh, also the batter looked oddly curdled at first, presumably because the eggs weren't fully incorporated. I panicked for a sec, but additional mixing did the trick (sorry, no photos of that).

Here are some batter-filled cups (batter makes a great breakfast, too, kids!):


The recipe may have been a little short of flavor at first, but the science worked perfectly - these little guys all baked up to perfect domes of golden goodness. The addition of heat also developed the flavor of the cake, because, well, that's just what happens. I should have remembered that. Duh.




Yes, those are Disney princess cupcake papers. Why? You got a problem with that? I didn't think so.

While these baked, I put Greg to work chopping up a pound of bittersweet chocolate for the frosting (I'm telling you, he was a great assistant!).




But then he had to leave to go to big important meetings. So busy!


I was starting to run a little late and needed more assistance, so I took John up on his offer to help me out. Thankfully, he was able to come over immediately. I was busy making the ganache when he arrived.





Ganache is so easy - heat some cream, add chocolate, wait till it melts, stir, add sugar, stir. You can easily add flavors, too. I added a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of vanilla extract, and a tablespoon of instant espresso (which always makes things taste more chocolatey). Once it cooled to a spreadable consistency, John got busy while I showered and finished a mix for Pailo's party. John did SUCH a great job!!



I mean really...


Amazing.




The frosting came out so well. Not too sweet, and very chocolatey. As it cooled further, it took on a bit of a fudgy texture. It was rich and delicious, and I'll probably never ever go back to making chocolate buttercream if I can avoid it.

The cupcakes were a big hit at the party. I don't have any of the pictures of Pailo blowing out his candles (though they're out there on the interweb somewhere), but you can check out John's party pics right here! Fun times were had by all.

So that's it for now. Check back here often for more updates/experiments. I think my next project is going to be black and white cookies. That should make for some messy ass photos.

Well, thanks for reading.

Pie for now!