Modern Art Desserts

Striated Turret Stands

Today, SFMOMA is hosting a Topping Out event in Jesse Square park, where everyone can witness the highest beam lifted into place on their expanded building. It’s hard to believe that over a year has passed since the SFMOMA ground breaking ceremony, where we marked the occasion with a site-specific cookie wall. While we won’t be participating in today’s events, we wanted to share these photos taken on a shoot in July, commemorating a building that today reaches new heights, always deserving of a celebration, and happens to look great as a dessert.

photo by Leah Rosenberg

Originally, we created this layered dessert, inspired by Mario Botta’s iconic striated turret, for a press event introducing Snohetta’s plans for SFMOMA’s expansion. Alternating layers of black cocoa cake and whipped cream topped with a chocolate sable were diligently stacked in these perfect glass votives that Caitlin found on a whim.

photo by Clay McLachlan

We were adamant about getting the dessert turret documented with the architectural turret it was inspired by. So we packed up the camera, a pint of whipping cream, and a whisk and headed downtown where we whipped the cream and assembled the dessert on site. Which happened to be outside at the fountain area just across the street from the museum we remember and love. And now whenever I pass it, I think of all the amazing art-inspired desserts we got to make within the building, and how much fun is yet to be had outside of it. Like whipping cream in situ.

photo by Clay McLachlan

Auer-crack-ers

by Leah Rosenberg

Two of our favorite and most frequent visitors to the rooftop coffee bar were curators of Architecture and Design, Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher and Joseph Becker. They would come up for their morning espresso drinks, sometimes again for a meeting in the afternoon and if the timing was right, I would poke my head out from the kitchen to say a quick hello and inquire about any creative endeavors. In their open and generous manner, they would update us on what they were working on next or who they were meeting while they waited (never too long) for their drinks. In exchange, I would usually give them a taste of what we were working on. These brief exchanges would often turn into collaborations on a special event or a dessert. On a tour with Jennifer through the Buckminster Fuller exhibition, as it was being installed, the creation of the Buckminster Fuller Hot Chocolate was finalized when we saw the magazine cover of the proposed floating village in a vitrine.

It was always a treat to correspond with people who reply to emails with enthusiasm and in some case with thoughts they might have on art that would make a good dessert. Like these from Joseph:

Claes Oldenburg (too literal?)

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, ‘Dropped Cone’ (2001)

and Le Corbusier…too architectural? But what about a chocolate meringue Ronchamp? Yum!

Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp, 1954

This time two years ago, Field Conditions opened. This exhibition of “spatial experiments”, included nearly 30 works by artists and architects, and entirely in black, white and shades of grey. For the opening event, the A+D department partnered with SFMOMA’s education team who had scheduled a program in conjunction with the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival to celebrate John Cage.

Field Conditions installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2012; photo: Matthew Millman

We were already fans of Tauba Auerbach’s work, from the 2009 SECA exhibition which was up when we first opened the rooftop coffee bar, so it was no surprise that her “50/50 Floor” appealed to us. The giant floor-tile installation, (coupled with a kinetic light installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer) is made of 50% black tiles and 50% white tiles, which are randomly distributed over the floor in a QR code–like pattern. Could we do a Mondrian-style cake that when cut into could be photographed with a QR code reader and take you to a website? We dreamed in black and white.

Tauba Auerbach, 50/50 Floor (detail) installed in Field Conditions, 2012; photo: Rocor

As the installation of the 50/50 floor neared completion, we got word at the side kitchen door that there were a few square feet of the black and white tile left. I asked Joseph if we could use it for the event to serve the series of black and white crackers we were working. In minutes we had them in the kitchen and started working on some spreads for the crackers. I acquired some squid ink from our friend Stuart at State Bird Provisions and waited for Tess, (a vegan whom I care for dearly and who, I was afraid would never come back to work if she had to witness squid ink in our sweet little production kitchen), to leave for the day before I attempted to color match our house-made ricotta to the black tile.

photo courtesy of Lanlian Szeto of SFMOMA, thankfully she took this, because it’s the only documentation we have of the whole process/event!

Here, Tess Wilson and I are setting up what we like to affectionately call Tauba’s “Auer-crack-ers”. We set up black and white tiles that functioned as serving plates for the crackers buttermilk (white) and black charcoal (black). Guests were invited to choose their own spread (which we couldn’t help ourselves refer to as grout) from a selection of housemade squid ink ricotta, white bean hummus, black sesame spread and whipped ricotta. Everyone was entertained at the thought that they were essentially “eating off the floor” and delighted to get to take their tile home as a memento.

Mike Mills and Bags of Biscuits

I just learned that today, August 26th 2014, is National Dog Day! In lieu of bombarding you with videos of cute dogs eating cake, I thought this would be a perfect occasion to share some photos of the time we made dog biscuits for humans. Last January, the Roxie Theater screened Mike Mills’ 2011 film Beginners as part of an event for SFMOMA’s Live Projects series.

As frequent SFMOMA collaborators, we set up a table at the front of the theatre to serve ticket holders New Orlean’s Iced Coffee and bags of dog treats to eat at specific points throughout the film.

The audience, fully caffeinated and captivated as they listen to director Mike Mills in conversation with SFMOMA’s Gina Basso about the film and his recent commission for Project Los Altos.

In Beginners, Oliver (played by Ewan McGregor) inherits a Jack Russell, Arthur (played by Cosmo), from his father after he dies. For those who haven’t seen the film, Arthur has subtitles. This could be taken for him “talking,” but Mills suggests that the dog’s subtitles throughout the movie are “a way to externalize a character who was sometimes non-verbal.”

While we are huge Mike Mills fans, nothing gets our attention like a cute dog and the delight at what ensues when that cute dog “talks”: the sound of 150 bags of cookies rustling at various points throughout a film.

The Glamorous Wall of Cookies

by Tess Wilson

When Design*Sponge approached me about building a photo backdrop for their book release party, I instantly arranged a meeting (drinks at Locanda) with Leah Rosenberg, my dear friend, boss, and partner-in-cake-crime. Though Leah’s an incredible painter, and I like to dabble in embroidery and flower-arranging, when we work together there’s generally baking involved. Leah’s the head pastry chef for Blue Bottle Coffee in SFMOMA’s Rooftop Sculpture Garden, and I’m her assistant, and we’re happiest when we’re working up there in our little 6'x6’ kitchen. Our brainstorming session yielded quite a few excellent, edible ideas that we would need serious grant money to pull off, but our favorite reasonable one was the notion of a wall of cookies. The Glamorous Wall Of Cookies… Guests could have their picture taken, eat a cookie, and feel at peace with the world.

We went to work. I made a test batch of cookies just to play with sprinkles and such. I had the invaluable help of an enthusiastic 11-year-old, obviously a sprinkle & lustre-dust prodigy (she also took the photo).

Using the random marker colors we had on hand, Leah & I did a (very, very rough) sketch of the cookie wall, to entice the Design*Sponge team. They liked it! The Glamorous Wall of Cookies was a go.

I created a game plan in an Excel document to keep us on track. I don’t know if you can read my writing, but the only thing checked off is “Make a pointless Excel document”.

Next, I grabbed a piece of wood and a few nails from home and brought them to the tiny kitchen. We experimented with making holes in the cookies and hanging them from the wood, creating what I like to call The Hobo Wall Of Terror. Don’t be scared, it’s all part of the process.

Now that we felt confident that it was possible to hang cookies on a wall, we crunched the numbers and got started making 500 cookies. Remember: 6'x6’ kitchen. Our mixer can handle enough dough to make about 60 cookies, so we would be making 9 or 10 batches. As you can tell from her paintings and art cakes, Leah is incredibly skilled at creating and combining colors so she tinted her cookies confidently, but I still have so much to learn.

I tinted small amounts of dough at a time, scared I would ruin an entire batch. This actually ended up working fine, as we were so inspired by Julia Rothman’s book tour illustrations. We wanted to capture all the subtle colors she used, as well as the d*s ribbons and the gorgeous book cover.

We rolled and cut the dough.

We punched holes in each one (we discovered that old-fashioned paper straws worked best).

And once all the cookies were baked, carefully layered them in Cambros, labeled with their quantity & (occasionally questionable) colors.

All the while, the task of building an actual wall (that could hold 500 cookies and wouldn’t fall on people) loomed. We admitted we’re really more cake-bakers than wall-builders, so we outsourced to our immensely talented friend Sam of Synth Island, who whipped up an elegant, sturdy design. The three of us took a fieldtrip to Discount Builders, where every single person working helped us. They were all patient, efficient, friendly, and truly helpful.

We’d brought cookie “swatches” which we intended to share with all the employees….until I set them down in the wet color sample the nice paint boys whipped up for us. You see, it’s not enough to see what the cookies look like nearby the paint color- they really need to be all up in it. From the beginning, I’d been envisioning colorful cookies on a gold background- gold to reference the book cover and to add plenty of glamour. Leah gently reminded me that no paint would create the true-gold background I dreamed of- for that, we would need to gold-leaf the wall (we would still love to do this, so please contact us if you need a gold-leafed wall full of possibly edible-gold-leafed cookies. It would be gorgeous..). Instead of settling for a trying-to-be-gold-but-really-yellow effect, Leah had the great idea of using the pretty grey of the Design*Sponge website. When I put the cookies in the paint, the colors really popped, so we were satisfied.

We found everything we needed, and loaded it up in a Zipcar (one of 4 vehicle rentals involved in this project- none of us have a car, and I don’t even have a license).

The actual wall had to be built on the sidewalk in front of Sam’s apartment, as San Francisco apartments cannot accommodate very much lumber. Leah & I gridded out the holes for all of the nails (that took a few attempts), deciding to hang 2 cookies on each nail so the colors would change throughout the night of the party. I drilled, I broke the drillbit, she drilled, nailed, and painted, and I tried not to break anything else. The day of the party arrived and Leah baked the hundreds of cookies in our little oven (referred to affectionately by guests as our Easy-Bake Oven). Our friend Kelly volunteered to be Leah’s lovely cookie wall assistant at the party, since I would be out of town. Excitement was running high! We love Design*Sponge, we love baking, and we love outlandish projects- I hope everyone at the event had as much fun as we did making the cookie wall!

Here are some photos taken at the event at Anthropologie. You can see Blair Sneddon’s photos of guests posing in front of the wall eating their cookies here!

Cookie wall by Leah Rosenberg and Tess Wilson. The cookies were dyed in custom colors to match the book. Everyone was invited to take a cookie and a photo! Proceeds from this event benefited the local arts charity Children’s Art Center. Images by Blair Sneddon. See more cookie wall photos here!

The time we made a Cartagena for Cartagena.

Alejandro Cartagena, Fragmented Cities, Juarez #2, from the series Suburbia Mexicana, 2007 // Cartagena Ice Cream + Sorbet Trio // ©Modern Art Desserts

We featured our Cartagena Ice Cream and Sorbet Trio in Modern Art Desserts, but didn’t get to include the story (or picture) of when we fed Alejandro Cartagena (the artist, himself!) the trio of ice creams and sorbets. He and Pablo Lopez Luz, another artist featured in the Photography in Mexico exhibition, were in town for the opening celebration, and we were delighted to invite him up to try our finalized (just in time for the opening!) dessert.

Alejandro Cartagena and Pablo Lopez Luz eat some ice cream!

Mary Heilmann takes the cake (back to NY)

by Leah Rosenberg

We learned earlier on that it is best to get a sense of an upcoming show ahead of time, to talk to curators as they are planning the exhibition, to get inside scoops from the museum install crew, to make the most successful rendition of a dessert based on an artwork. Often, extra time was needed to get the approval of the artist, or to work out serving details, or to order ribbon…from Canada.

But none of this mattered when I discovered one Wednesday night in April that Mary Heilmann was giving a lecture downstairs at the Wattis Theatre the following night. Mary Heilmann is my favorite artist. I could go on about how her work got me through grad school, but best to cut to the part about cake.

I didn’t sleep that night – Mary Heilmann’s paintings playing like a slide show through my head – each one a possible dessert. I thought about just going to the lecture, sitting on the edge of my seat and on her every word, but it would be a dream come true to meet her in person. And if I met her in person, I would have to make her a dessert. This is, afterall, why we were there doing what we did in the tiny kitchen at SFMOMA. For moments like this. And this, and this, and even this.

Mary Heilmann, Fire and Ice Remix/ sketch by Leah for Fire and Ice dessert

I had to carefully plan the following day, already packed with regular production, meetings and whatever else comes up in a day, in order to make something for Mary with the time and resources available. Maybe all this sounds a bit crazy-making. Or maybe, it sounds a bit like art-making. Whatever it was, on April 11, 2013, thanks to some fancy facilitating by SFMOMA Public Programs Associate, Gina Basso, I got to meet Mary and Mary got an impromptu dessert based on her painting Fire and Ice Remix. This Red Hot Red Velvet Cake with crème fraiche-spiked cream cheese frosting and buttermilk ice milk was made once and never again, what one might call an Artist Proof in the printmaking world, I suppose.

In the time between a tech run-through and her lecture, Gina brought Mary Heilmann up to the rooftop for a cake and ice cream remix of her Fire and Ice Remix.

While the dessert might not have been perfect, it was eaten and now is gone. Which thankfully, is not the case with the painting that inspired it. One week after her lecture, I received this sweet note in my inbox from Mary (herself!). Even her emails turned to art.

“Leah Thank you again for the beautiful Fire and Ice Dessert…..

I even saved some and brought it home to new york and ate it when I got home.

Hey here it is I ’ll never forget Love Mary H”

Ice Cream for Guglie

by Leah Rosenberg

For years, Tony Cragg's Guglie was the first artwork we would see as we emerged from the elevator and out into the SFMOMA rooftop pavilion. For months, we had been thinking about building a striped frozen mousse using a cone shaped mold, but we had to be practical about time and freezer space. With the Robert Frank show about to come down (and therefore our float), another ice cream based treat to replace it was on our minds.

Tony Cragg, Guglie, 1987; wood, rubber, concrete, metal, stone, and plastic; dimensions variable; The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Tony Cragg

Sometimes the artwork would tell us what it needed to be and this time it begged us to be an ice cream cone. In this case, the perfect flavor and hue of ice cream already existed, so it didn’t take much to call up our friends at Humphry Slocombe to send over a couple of buckets of their Strawberry Sorbet (Salted Caramel replaced this in the winter) and Malted Milk Chocolate to match the sculpture. Our true work would lie then on creating a custom cone wrapper (and eventually, on the warm days, non stop ice cream scooping).

Here is Caitlin’s first test. Turns out some extra math was required, as we needed the stripes to match up just right.

Where we would often find ourselves toiling away in the kitchen testing recipes, trying to get flavors and textures just right, this time we brought out the paint box to engineer a custom sleeve so we could transform what was once was a brown sugar waffle cone into… a Cragg cone!

Photo: Charlie Villyard

Before Modern Art Desserts (the book) came along, a photographer from the SFMOMA had been the primary chronicler of our desserts. Charlie Villyard, member of the installation crew and talented photographer, would come up every few months and document all of the goodies we had been making. And one of our very favorite shots he ever took was this one of our Tony Cragg ice cream cone.

Here he is, doing whatever needs to be done to get the shot right. But quickly, before the ice cream melts!

Since the Cragg piece was installed in the pavilion and not the main galleries, it was one of the rare occasions in which you could eat the dessert you ordered right in next to the artwork that inspired it. An even rarer occasion was purposefully scooping ice cream directly onto the floor!

After a visit to SFMOMA from LA, a relative of mine gave me this. He had saved his cone wrapper, collaged it onto a photograph he took of the Tony Cragg piece and put it in a frame.

Sometimes a sculpture inspires an ice cream cone. Sometimes an ice cream cone inspires a collage.

You can see the Cragg Cone (in its upright state) and the recipe on page 155 of Modern Art Desserts. And in case you want to dress your cones this summer in stripes, we made a template that you can download here.

Celebrating Ice Cream

by Leah Rosenberg

Today we celebrate National Ice Cream Day with a couple of art-inspired ice cream sandwiches! You can thank President Ronald Reagan, who in 1984, designated the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day. Clearly exhibiting his good sense when it comes to sweets, he carried on to proclaim the entire month of July as National Ice Cream Month. In the proclamation, President Reagan (who also had an affinity for jelly beans!) called for all people of the United States to observe these events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

Photo by Clay McLachlan.

Joel Shapiro, Untitled, 2008 (Pastel and charcoal on paper) Photo by Clay McLachlan

Caitlin’s sketchbook detailing Joel Shapiro Ice Cream Sandwich recipe and flavors.

We designed this dessert- a layer of strawberry and then lavender ice cream sandwiched between two vanilla ice box cookies (one with a black stripe and the other with a yellow stripe) for the 2011 SFMOMA Art Auction. When SFMOMA asked us to do a special something for the upcoming art auction, we explored a few ideas before settling on this ice cream treat based on Joel Shapiro’s 2008 Untitled pastel drawing. Earlier on, we mocked up thoughts for Liz Larner chocolate dipped potato chips in which house-made potato chips would be dipped in a black cocoa-tobacco chocolate shell. We considered a mondrian-style cake that reveals a colorful Mark Grotjahn burst.

Leah’s sketchbook brainstorming desserts for SFMOMA 2011 Art Auction.

The Joel Shapiro ice cream sandwich was a rendition of our Agnes Martin version we created in 2010 while her paintings were on view for the exhibition, Calder to Warhol, introducing the Fisher Collection and celebrating the museum’s 75th anniversary. Subtle bands of cream, parchment and a glaze of creamy yellow inn Martin’s painting Wheat were translated into delicious, quiet layers of rose mastic ice milk, chamomile ice cream contained between two buckwheat biscuits.

Photo by Todd Selby

Over the years, we created a few more art-inspired ice cream-focused treats, which can all be found with inspirational stories and recipes in the Modern Art Desserts book. Hopefully there are enough of them to get you through to the end of this ice cream focused month… consider it your patriotic duty to enjoy them!

Jay DeFeo Floating Island

by Leah Rosenberg

Not long ago, I mentioned baseball in a post and assured you it would be the only time you would catch me referencing sports. Since then, I have attended two Giants games at AT&T park and a few days after that listened to the Mets playing the Giants in the kitchen, while I was playing with cookie dough.

At the stadium, watching the game live, I had a bit of a hard time following the innings and strike outs, as I found myself more taken by the bountiful bouquets of cotton candy bouncing up and down the stairways across the stadium. Or the way a vendor would hand a churro to a customer as if they were passing the baton in an Olympic relay. The best , though, was the fellow, armed with a holster of whipped cream around his waist, who floated up and down our row suited with a back pack of hot chocolate.

Surely by now you are wondering where this is going or get to the part about baseball already. Perhaps by now you are imagining Modern Art Desserts taking their Pop Art Corn to the bleachers? Or the Mondrian Cake served up alongside garlic fries and beer? As these thoughts fleeted around between innings, so did the image of the late San Francisco artist, Jay DeFeo flying a Giants banner from the fire escape of her Fillmore Street apartment while “The Rose” (1958–66) is removed via forklift.

The Jay DeFeo Trust posted this gem right as the Giants sweep the World Series in 2012 and DeFeo’s masterpiece was about to go on view at SFMOMA for her revelatory retrospective. During the exhibition walk through, one SFMOMA curator noted were DeFeo, an avid Giants fan, still with us today, you can bet she would have skipped the exhibition opening for the Giants homecoming parade.

Although we have yet to make desserts (marshmallows!) based on baseball bases, we did create a dessert, our version of an Ile Flottante, based on one of DeFeo’s works that we offered while it was on view at SFMOMA.

The Illustrated History of the Universe is an oil painting featuring a deceptively simple white disc floating asymmetrically against an impasto grey ground. Its complexity lies in how the layered textures convey three-dimensionality. I love that you can see the artist’s handprint on the bottom left.

So, although I can’t give you a play-by-play of the nine innings of the Giants game I attended since my attention was drawn to other things, I can give you step-by-step instructions on how to knock this DeFeo dessert out of the park. The photos that follow were all taken by Willa Koerner - at SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).

Step 1: sift the powdered sugar.

Step 2: beat powdered sugar with egg whites. // Step 3: pile the sugar + egg mixture into a piping bag- and also fold caramelized cocoa nibs into fluff before loading the mixture into the piping bag- details, details!

Step 4: Pipe the meringues (an Ateco 808 tip is what we used). // Step 5: Bake meringues at 200 degrees for 1 hour and let them cool in the oven overnight.

Step 6: Dip the meringues in (all organic) chocolate magic shell.

Step 7: Allow the shell to harden in a cool spot and remove from sheet tray. Store in freezer until ready to serve.

Step 8: Spread the the creamy base (which is a black sesame creme anglaise) like you are applying an impasto layer of paint to a canvas.

Step 9: Float the meringue on the creme anglaise and sprinkle with charcoal sea salt.

Step 10: Eat, enjoy! And then maybe take yourself to a ball game.

Donald Judd’s Birthday Suit… I Mean SOUP!

by Leah Rosenberg

When one thinks about art and tomato soup, Warhol’s screen prints of soup cans probably come to mind.

Here is Caitlin pointing them out when we were visting MOMA during our visit to New York last spring.

Warhol’s screen prints might also come to mind when one thinks about themes of seriality and repetition in art. So too might Minimalist artist Donald Judd's stack pieces that focus on “real materials in real space” and their purity of form.

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1973; stainless steel and oil enamel on Plexiglas, 114 in. x 27 in. x 24 in. (289.56 cm x 68.58 cm x 60.96 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Purchase with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and Friends of the Museum; © Judd Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York; photo: Ben Blackwell

Last year when his painting Untitled 1962 was on view as part of the Permanent Collection exhibition on the 4th floor of SFMOMA, we made a minimalist soup in reference to the minimalist work. Donald Judd’s birthday was last week and I wanted to make this soup for the occasion and float a candle in it, but it has been outrageously warm here and it didn’t seem right to post about a hot soup. That said, word on the field is that Dirty Girl Farms just got their second wave of tomatoes in the ground this weekend that will be ready for harvest in August. If you can’t wait until then, or are eager to make this soup for someone’s birthday like we were, you could use the whole peeled tomatoes by Jovial.

The day we photographed this up on the SFMOMA rooftop last year, was a perfect day for soup.

And while this soup does a lousy job at holding a birthday candle it really does look like Judd’s Untitled! Have a look for yourself!

Epilogue: It occurred to me that Donald Judd and Andy Warhol have more in common than repetition in art. They also have tomatoes…or would have had tomatoes in common had we actually gone through with this Bloody Mary Jell-o we were testing in response to this savory palette self portrait.

This sketch by Caitlin is far more delicious than the Jell-o itself. Trust us, eating paper would be more delicious than eating this particular Jell-o. And although this is a place where we will share other failed attempts at creating edible artworks, this is the only time we will ever speak of this particular (and epically disgusting) Jell-o.

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