Pastry chef Caitlin Williams Freeman has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention lately for the fun and arty desserts that she's been serving up at the Blue Bottle Coffee Bar, part of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. Freeman, a former co-owner of the lovely Miette in SF, brings artwork to the kitchen by creating sweet treats that are inspired by the work of famous artists. On the Blue Bottle menu, you'll find intriguing items like the Katharina Fritsch Ice Cream Sandwich and the Mondrian cake. I really love Freeman's creative way of looking at art and food and her ability to tie together the cafeteria with the museum in a totally unique way. That said, I'm really excited about the fact that artist Wayne Thiebaud's yummy cake paintings have finally been brought to life!
Wayne Thiebaud is a California artist best know for his paintings of everyday objects and is particularly famous for his mouth-watering pictures of cakes, pies, and other sweets! I think Michael Kimmelman summed it up best when he wrote in the New York Times in 2001 that "If the world were a perfect place, the Wayne Thiebaud retrospective that has just opened at the Whitney Museum would be nailed to the walls for good and we would be free to stop by whenever we needed to remind ourselves what happiness feels like." I hope Freeman utilizes more of Thiebaud's work in the future. How could she not? There's just so much deliciousness to work with!
For more about Freeman's desserts, click here. You can also check out Megan's version of Freeman's Mondrian cake over at Feasting on Art, right here.
There are A TON of Halloween-related recipes circling the Web right now and trying to navigate your way through them all can be just a little exhausting. For this year's Halloween post, I wanted to narrow it down to the most inspiring options. So I scoured the World Wide Web, looking for ideas that I hadn't seen before or that made me smile wider than all the rest. Enjoy and Happy Halloween! [above: Marzipan Figures by Dean & Deluca ($35)]
Vampire Cookies by Baking Bites
Gingerbread Skeletons from The Secret Life of Food 
Cupcake Envy's Spider cake and cupcakes (This one really creeps me out, which means that it must be good!)
Gingerbread Monster by Scottoons (This one is actually a clay sculpture, but I thought it was a cute idea for Halloween gingerbread cookies!)
Martha Stewart's Boo-tiful Cake
The Food Network's Screaming Spice Cookies
My birthday was last month (yes, I can admit it) and my wonderful mother was kind enough to make me Momofuku's Crack Pie to help celebrate! Talk about pressure! I've pretty much been obsessed with the Crack Pie since I wrote about it back in July and have been longing to try it. I had such high expectations for this pie that I was sure that I would be disappointed and, to my surprise, I wasn't! It was sooo good!! And I wasn't the only one who thought so! I gave a piece to one of my coworkers and this is what she e-mailed me:
Also, available for tasting at my bday party: Betty Crocker's Gluten-Free Brownies. Again, I wasn't really expecting much. Can Betty Crocker really make a good gluten-free brownie? Yep, they sure can! The brownies were yummy and chocolaty, just like a brownie should be. You would never know the difference. Also, the ingredient list was fairly short and I actually recognized all the words on the list, which is surprising given that this is a box mix.
This week illustrator Laura Ljungkvist is sharing with us her recipe for oat crumble apple pie (see the bottom of this post on how to access a larger version of the recipe). I was super excited when Laura sent it over because not only is it a great image, but I love love love apple crumble! Especially with ice cream! Actually, if isn't served warm, with ice cream, I may throw a hissy fit! Not that it isn't yummy just on it's own but the heat and the ice cream transform it from yummy to heavenly.
Laura Ljungkvist is a Swedish artist based in New York whose work incorporates colorful images, geometric shapes, and minimalist design. Known for her incredible drawings that are built around one continuous line, Laura has illustrated numerous children's books, including the popular Follow the Line series.
In addition, Laura has also created designs for clients such as Harper’s Bazaar, House and Garden, The London Sunday Times, Mademoiselle, The New York Times, and MTV, among others. In fact, the illustration for apple crisp that Laura sent over first appeared in the awesome British children's magazine, Anorak. Below is the cover of the issue in which Laura's recipe appears. It also happens to be the chocolate issue! So there's sure to be lots of great drawings of chocolate by really talented illustrators. Check out their Web site, right here.
Graphic designer and Mixing Bowl contributor Heather Dutton contacted me today about a design contest that she is taking part in over at the fabric Web site Spoonflower. Designers were asked to create a fabric design that incorporated images of spoons and flowers (like the name of site). The winner gets 5 free yards of their design and the winning fabric will be available for sale on Etsy for 1 week. So, you'll get a chance to buy the winning fabric! The winner will be announced Thursday.
In addition, if you liked the design that Heather created for her Mixing Bowl recipe last July, you'll be happy to know that Heather has some lovely new notebooks ($5) in her Etsy shop that feature the strawberry and pear print that she created for her post. Click here to check them out.
To celebrate the release of the film version of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, I thought I'd post a few pics of some fabulous Wild Things-inspired cakes. The cake above, from Coco Cake, has been floating around the web for a while, but with the movie coming out on October 16th, I just had to post it, along with the one below by tallulah blue.
If you're not as artistically gifted as these bakers, you can also buy edible cake decorations that will quickly transform a plain old cake into a page from Sendak's much-loved book! Check out Ebay for more designs or just click here for the one below.
Today’s Mixing Bowl recipe comes from graphic designer and Etsy seller Sarah Roberto of Oh So Good. Her delicious recipe for whole wheat zucchini cake with coconut cream cheese frosting would be make a tasty weekend treat and would also be a great way start the fall baking season! Personally, I love zucchini bread, even though zucchini is one of my least favorite veggies. I'll eat the green squash, but it's not my first choice, but zucchini bread . . . yum! The fact that it doesn't have an overwhelming zucchini flavor makes it a great, healthier, dessert option for the kiddies, too. Just don't tell them that there's zucchini in it!
The Web site for Alison Nelson’s Chocolate Bar is jam packed with designs I love. I really like the look of the Atomic Chocolates and the stylishly-packaged chocolate bars, whose labels are designed by artists like Rolito and Nathan Jurevicius. I'm especially interested in trying the Retro Bars, which come in flavors like malted milk, salty pretzel, and peanut butter caramel. So many choices! You can find stores in New York or Dubai or you can order online by clicking here.
I'm a big fan of silhouettes, so I'm loving these shadow puppet chocolates from Food Flower Style. Yes, those are actually shadow puppet designs traced and cut out of parchment paper, and then used as chocolate molds. You can use the same concept for any sort of design, although the shadow puppet idea is really cute. (Unfortunately, this post is no longer on the Food Flower Style site, but I found a copy right here.)
This week’s Mixing Bowl post is from Australian-based baker Naomi Henderson of Hello Naomi. She has prepared a cute pavlova recipe that can be easily be converted into delicious pavlova cupcakes, too! Personally, I love pavlova! It's a sloppy baker's dream! It's supposed to be cracked and uneven, so you don't need to worry about being perfect. Besides, who can resist a dessert named after a ballerina?
I first discovered Naomi's work on Flickr, where she started uploading photos of her creations after taking a cake-decorating class in early 2007. While working on her PhD in computer engineering, Naomi started creating her cute and clever designs, and, apparently, I'm not the only one who took notice! The photos of her creations became so popular, and there was such a demand for her desserts, that she was able to start her own business! If you visit her Flickr site, you'll know why. There's always something fun to check out on her photostream! My favorite Naomi sweet treat has always been the bird cupcakes, but the Pacman cupcakes are pretty hard to resist. They would be perfect for your favorite guy. . . or video game-loving girl. :-)
Check out Naomi's Web site here and click here to view her Flickr photostream.
One final, end of summer item from my Japanese dessert adventure: Ice cream crepes. It's ice cream, but it's a crepe, so it requires chewing. Kinda like an ice cream sandwich, I suppose. Not fun for people with teeth sensitivity, but I don't have that problem, so I'd give it a shot! If you're in San Francisco, you can get crepe ice cream at Genki Crepes and Sophie's Crepes. Otherwise, look for them at Japanese restaurants and markets. [Top photo by Brian.]
