Firstly, I wanted to let you know that all went well at the CUESA Art of the Drink event last week, where we matched cookies to color and color to flavor.
You can check out some of the other art-inspired offerings by local chefs and bartenders from the evening here!
It is fitting, I think, to continue this discussion on the topic of color matching since the Golden Gate Bridge, famously known for having it’s own paint color dubbed “International Orange” (similar to safety orange, but deeper and with a more reddish tone) just celebrated it’s 77th anniversary.
Two years ago, on the grand occasion of the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary, SFMOMA organized all sorts of bridge related activities to celebrate and asked if we could participate with a special bridge-inspired dessert. We had the brilliant idea/ intense desire/ ludicrous dream to make a cake as long as the bridge. We would visit the bridge with our tape measures and cake pans to plot out what is would take to bake and install 8,980 feet of cake. We soon realized this was indeed a ludicrous dream. It’s shockingly windy up there on the bridge and our calculations revealed that to cover the length the bridge we would have to make over 7,000 cakes, which meant we would have had to start baking two years prior. Not what one might refer to as “a piece of cake” at all!
For several months the whole city was celebrating this anniversary, even City Hall was illuminated in a color that could pass for International Orange. To be honest, I may have taken this photo of San Francisco’s City Hall during the 2012 World Series that the Giants won (and to be honest again, this might be the only time you will ever catch me referencing sports in a post!)
Some say the bridge is painted once every seven years, others say from end to end each year. The truth is that the Bridge is painted continuously. And now whenever I cross it, I can’t help but think of it as a never ending painting.
The For-site Foundation put together an exhibition called International Orange at Fort Point where contemporary artists had the opportunity to respond with new work to the bridge as icon, historic structure, and conceptual inspiration. Bay Area artist Stephanie Syjuco created a commemorative store which was recently acquired by the San Jose Museum of Art and is currently on view through August 24th as part of an exhibition of new works from their collection. I mention Stephanie’s piece here because she stocked the souvenir shop with all sorts of things and every single item was treated with the famous color of the bridge. And it was this piece that inspired a series of treats we produced for the closing reception of the For-Site International Orange exhibition.
Here they are in order of appearance: Orange blossom meringues, vanilla bean + orange striped sables, salt-kissed shortbread w/ orange liqueur marshmallows, International Orange travel cakes w/ fruit leather flag.
On the very right of the above photo you can spot trays of small vials we filled with salt we made with water we collected from the Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge. Caitlin recounts the story on page 195 of Modern Art Desserts of our excursion with Bay Voyager Captain Charles from Jack London Square to the Golden Gate Bridge.
If you want to see us in life vests rather than chef coats and on a boat (and a bit of a laugh)… do watch this!
We procured lemon verbena, mint, rosemary, rose geranium from Eat Well Farms to infuse the sugars for the various cookies we were making.
One might wonder what comes first? The color or the flavor, the cookie or the art?
Above: Color Pairings by Leah RosenbergBelow: Two-toned ice box cookies, each color a different flavor!
Around this time last year, we mentioned the grilled cheese sandwich which was a quite literally inspired by Jasper Johns’ lead relief “Bread” that was part of “Jasper Johns: Seeing with the Mind’s Eye” exhibition.
This year, in honor of his 84th birthday (tomorrow!), we are going to show you how it’s done. Not how a Jasper Johns lead relief is done (I wouldn’t eat that), but rather how a Jasper Johns grilled cheese is made. Ready?
Step 1: Slice the bread, which is a sweet loaf from Acme Bread Company – the perfect texture for grilled cheese.
photo: Willa Koerner, SFMOMA
Step 2: Add layers of cheese and butter. After an arduous cheese tasting to see which two cheeses paired best, we in the end decided on a Vella Daisy Cheddar + goat Cave Aged Gruyere.
Step 3: Press it, press it good. I usually sing this as I put the sandwich into the press and then let it be for 3 minutes until golden. You see, the whole process of making a grilled cheese based on a famous artwork is super fun, but what makes it even more fun is if you make up a ridiculous song about making it in the process
photo: Willa Koerner, SFMOMA
Step 4: Gently place grilled cheese on slate. Jasper Johns’s “Bread,” is a lead panel with a piece of bread on it, so we made the grilled cheese to serve on a to-scale board painted to look like lead. It was a giant, oversized board people would carry back to their table. Curator Kate Mendillo actually escorted us down one day to see the piece before the show opened so we could measure the “bread” piece to figure out where exactly to place the sandwich on the board. We wanted it to be as true to size as manageable. Can you tell which is the real ‘wich?
Jasper Johns, Bread, 1969; lead relief with laminated embossed paper, hand-colored in oil, ed. 19/60; The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at SFMOMA // Johns Grilled Cheese sandwich on painted board.
Step 6: Admire your craftsmanship and consider Jasper Johns’ words: “Take an object. Do something to it. Then do something else to it." Whether you knew of Johns’ work or not, I will assume you need no help figuring out what to do with this object next. Enjoy it!
In addition to SFMOMA having one of these pieces as part of the Don and Doris Fisher Collection, I have also noticed it is part of The Nasher Collection in Dallas, Texas. So while you are eating your grilled cheese, you might want to peruse their site where you can view their entire collection.
Salvador Dali was born today in 1904. He is best know for his participation in the Surrealist movement with his paintings, films, and performances. Oh, you might also know him by his mustache.
He was also quoted to have dreamed of being a chef when he was six years old and that those iconic melting pocket watches that appeared in many of his paintings were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert cheese melting in the sun. In 1973, Les Diners de Gala, an eccentric cookbook written and illustrated by Dali,was published featuring 136 off-kilter recipes in 12 categories. It included entire chapters devoted to aphrodisiacs, exotic dishes, snails and frogs, and the appropriate uses for “atteletes” (meat jewellery). An alternative to your standard gift of flowers on Mother’s Day perhaps?
Salvador Dalí. (Spanish, 1904-1989). The Persistence of Memory. 1931. Oil on canvas, 9 ½ x 13" (24.1 x 33 cm). © Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS)
Rather than sharing a recipe for melting wheel of already soft cheese on this occasion, I thought we could share this recipe for Salvador Dali’s Toffee with Pine Cones, which we had the chance of recreating for an event at Kadist two years ago.
In September 2012, artist Ben Kinmont presented “An Exhibition in your mouth”, at Kadist. For this multi-course meal of recipes selected from an array of historical sources, we contributed the Eighth Course (to be served with coffee or tea): an edition of 170 pieces of toffee inspired by his 1973 recipe.
Toffee with pine cones
by Salvador Dali, 1973
2 ¼ lbs of sugar
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of butter
1 slab of marble
1 tablespoon of pine needle oil*
7 oz of pine nuts
In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water and cook over medium flame.
Be careful: you have to watch the process since the sugar is turning
to toffee (or caramel, however you want to call it). It can burn very
fast.
When it turns brown and has started to smell like something burnt,
remove quickly from the fire. Add the tablespoon of butter which will
melt right away. You don’t have to stir.
Grease the slab of marble with oil; pour the toffee on it. Using a
spatula or wooden spoon, work it, combining it with the pine nuts.
Soon it will be cool enough for you to use your hands.
Watch it: don’t let it harden too much. Squeeze tin the palm of your
hand and form little sausages which you will cut to candy size. Allow
to thoroughly cool.
*Pine needle oil: Place some needles into a mason jar one quarter full; add olive oil until all the needles are covered. Let infuse for 3 weeks (out of direct sunlight), then strain.
For four days in May, art fairs take over New York City and The Frieze Art Fair, held on Randall’s Island May 9th-12th, is the week’s main event. With over 190 galleries, seven dynamic site-specific artist projects and an esteemed line-up of speakers, I believe the only way one could aspire to get through it all is with the help of exceptional coffee. And shortbread cookies.
Modern Art Desserts joined the Blue Bottle Coffee Bar at the Frieze Fair last year for the first time. We embarked on an East Coast adventure as we set up our art-inspired sweet production at the Blue Bottle kitchen in Williamsburg. We all worked together tirelessly to transport a selection of desserts by ferry and set them up on pedestals as if they were a show of their own.
Selection of art-inspired treats for Frieze New York 2014
We offered the racy, yet delicious Robert Mapplethorpe chocolate covered frozen banana, which we delighted in serving to the occasional art dealer or collector (who I’m fairly sure would get one just for the sake of weaving through the crowds of people waving a banana on a stick!) Or perhaps, (and even more likely) they just needed some sustenance.
We worked with Wendy at La Forêt ahead of time to produce a limited edition of Takashi Murakami chocolate eyeballs, just for the fair, culled directly from his iconic series of “Superflat” paintings.
This year though, we had the grandest of plans. We proposed a Mondrian cake assembly booth. Here, visitors could order a slice of Mondrian cake at the Coffee Bar, watch it being made through the clear acrylic display booth and pick it up at the walk-up window that was just big enough to serve a slice of cake through. It would have been a perfect site for this cake spectacle, but there are times when, as you know, our pie-in-the-sky ideas don’t always take off… on the ground.
Just look at this masterpiece of a sketch, mapping out our dreams of supplying a steady production of Mondrian cake to the artworld, like a Krispy Kreme factory delivers donuts.
Sadly, there will be no Mondrian cake assembly line this year at Frieze. But, you can certainly count on Blue Bottle Coffee Co. being there, serving artful designs on cappuccinos, taking orders like it’s a performance piece and pulling shots as if it were a choreographed dance.
Blue Bottle Coffee Bar, Frieze New York 2013
And for those of you who, like me, will be holding down the fort on the West Coast, I have a treat for us. I call them Friezees. We were going to serve them at the “cake booth” for a fun frozen pun, but since Modern Art Desserts won’t be there, I thought I may as well share it here. So long as we can pretend that here is a little window you walk up to in a clear acrylic booth amidst a Big Apple art fair.
NOLA Friezees
One of the desserts we offered quite consistently at the Blue Bottle Café at SFMOMA, was the Diebenkorn trifle. We were familiar with and drawn to Richard Diebenkorn’s iconic Ocean Park series, which he created when he moved to Santa Monica from Berkeley in 1966.
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #122, 1966, oil on canvas / Diebenkorn trifle
Upon seeing Ocean Park #122 in person at SFMOMA for the 75th anniversary exhibition back in 2010, it was clear to us that if this painting were to become a dessert, it would be a trifle. And so, we took Rose Levy Beranbaum’s beautiful Saint-Honoré Trifle from her freshly released Rose’s Heavenly Cakes and mixed it up a bit! Genoise cake, lemon mousse, lemon curd and pomegranate gelée
You can make these yourself by following the recipe on page 92 of Modern Art Desserts. Feel free to experiment with a variety citrus and gelée flavors.
The same month that the museum closed, “Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953 - 1966” opened at the de Young Museum. It was a significant exhibit because it shows how Diebenkorn moved from Abstract Expressionist work to work relatively more representational (landscape, figure, still life). There is such an elegance to his abstractions that I think he brought to the more figurative work. At the end of that same year, the show traveled to Palm Springs Art Museum. I happened to be there on vacation with my family and I was telling my mom about the time we made the Diebenkorn trifle in a large dish for Rose’s Book signing event and recalled the trifles my mom would make for special occasions. Richard Diebenkorn would have been 92 years old on April 22nd and I hope he would be happy to know we developed this trifle just for him. And if he were still alive today, I believe he might be moved to make a whole series of paintings based on my mom’s trifles.
Caitlin and I made this large scale trifle for Rose’s book event in 2010/ My mom made this trifle for NYE this year. She pours sherry over that trifle like she’s making sangria, but as you can see she also really know how to pack a glass dish with fruit.
I thought it would be nice to make a trifle for his birthday this year and maybe have a go at incorporating some of the components of my mom’s recipe while I’m at it. There was one problem. I didn’t have a trifle dish. Rather than rushing out to buy one, I considered Diebenkorn’s Notes on Beginning a Painting, which reads as sort of a manifesto that can be applied to just about every creative or intellectual endeavor.
If there is one thing you do today for one minute and fifty three seconds, let it be to watch this.
Without a trifle dish on hand, I guess you could say I “besmirched” the pristine trifle.
Deconstructed Trifle: cantaloupe granita, campari fruit compote, lady finger with stripe twist, meringue with apricot pate de fruit, cherry + citrus jelly with blanc mange, whipped cream with candied pecans. (Not so sure how moved Diebenkorn by all these components on one plate.)
Handpicked poppies for Diebenkorn / Richard Diebenkorn, Poppies, 1963, oil on canvas
If you don’t have a trifle dish or the desire to trifle with a trifle, then maybe just go out and pick a poppy for Diebenkorn in honor of his birthday and his work. While you are out there, take an extra minute to feel the Diebenkorn around you. Unless of course you are, like my mom, living in the Paris of the Prairies where it has continued to snow into April. You, then, might just be better off staying in… eating trifle.
I have been making my way through Niki Segnit’s brilliant book The Flavour Thesaurus. It has been so useful and inspiring that I started to do drawings based on some of the flavor pairings throughout the book.
Not twenty one pages in, I came across the coffee section and under it, a recipe for orange and coffee-bean liqueur. Adapted from one by Patricia Wells, who I admittedly had to look up, only to discover that she is so my kind of lady: dividing her time between Paris and Provence and dedicating a whole book to salad as a meal.
The recipe calls for an orange, 44 coffee beans, 44 sugar cubes and 500ml of a clear high proof alcohol. And then you let it sit in a jar for 444 days. Niki Segnit describes the recipe calling for such particulars with “marvelously arbitrary bossiness”. So I respected all of these measures and sourced the finest of ingredients.
The oranges I used were from the citrus trees at Montalvo Arts Center where I am currently staying.
Now, with all arbitrary bossiness aside, here is what you do:
Take the orange and make 44 slits in it. Put a coffee bean in each (this part is extraordinarily satisfying and sticky!) and you should have what looks like a work of art.
The coffee I used was Giant Steps, but you could try a variety really. I towered the sugar cubes.
Put 44 sugar cubes in a jar and place your masterpiece in the jar atop the sugar tower and pour in the alcohol. You can use brandy or rum or vodka. (I used Hangar 1 Vodka, which is quite a nice vodka with quite a nice story and made inside a hangar in Alameda). Then leave it for 444 days, agitating it from time to time to be sure the sugar dissolves.
I don’t know what the folks at Hangar 1 would think of what I have done to their Straight Vodka, but it is what it is now.
I was going to try to wait for 44 days to post this (because clearly there is some significance to the number 44), but today is Friday. And it might rain tomorrow. And March is the last month that oranges are in season here until November. And it’s almost 5 o'clock somewhere, so maybe you are already getting your bar on and want to try something new.
This batch will be ready on May 29th, 2015. So mark your calendars. We hope to launch this magic orange liqueur in a cocktail on the rooftop at SFMOMA if all goes according to plan.
When it comes to celebrations, mathematical constants aren’t typically at the top of my list. Most people ate pie today to celebrate the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. I was going to let this momentous (yet unofficial) “Pi Day” pass without a mention, until I realized that we’ve actually made cakes that could rise to the occasion and might be nice to share with you. (Plus, it allows the opportunity to showcase the rudimentary math skills required to execute them.)
Last year, I made a pie chart cake to serve at a meeting proposing some fresh elements to my job description. It was sort of in lieu of a power point presentation and I think it worked (especially the tiny slice of glitter portion).
As we went through the list of proposed projects and responsibilities, a label was stuck into the corresponding wedge of color. And then the cake was cut and served to the Blue Bottle Coffee + Pastry assembly.
photo courtesy of Caitlin Freeman
A few months later, I collaborated on a public event with Susan O'Malley in conjunction with a show we were in together called Happiness Is… at Montalvo Center for the Arts. The afternoon consisted of planting seed confetti, a walk led by Susan up to the lookout, where a surprise party awaited and cake was served. Read more about the show and the days events here!
photo courtesy of Michele Guieu
The cake reflected the favorite colors of the group from a survey we sent to participants prior to the walk.
photo courtesy of Michele Guieu
Perhaps on this Pi Day, I will include a new line to the survey:
For Pi Day, cake or pie?
This Friday, March 7th, is Piet Mondrian’s 142nd birthday. As you may know, we do not mess around when it comes to celebrating artists’ birthdays, but this Dutch painter’s work has had such an impact on our project over the years that we are making a weekend of it.
Please join us at the W.C. Morse Building (our newest Blue Bottle location, that could pass as a gallery as much as it could for a café) for a little Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Slices of Mondrian cake will be available on the menu for $4 and some sweet tunes will be played over the speakers throughout the weekend.
Friday: 7am – 6pm
Saturday + Sunday: 8am – 6pm
W.C. Morse Blue Bottle Cafe
4270 Broadway,
Oakland, CA 94611
When we served our first slice of Mondrian cake on May 9th, 2009 on the rooftop at the Blue Bottle SFMOMA café, we had no idea that a cake inspired by a Dutch painting would become a book cover, or that we would later teach classes on how to make it, or that SFMOMA visitors would admit to paying museum admission just to get a piece of the edible art, that it would be “instagrammed” so voraciously, or that we would finally find a way to ship it to your doorsteps.
While SFMOMA is closed for expansion, we want to keep the Mondrian cake relevant, special, and fresh, all the while creating new desserts to share with you here. In order to do this, we need to carve out some time in the kitchen testing recipes and out in the world studying artworks and then put the two together with focus and finesse. And so, as exhibitions go up and come down, so do art-based cakes on the web. This week will be your last chance to order the Mondrian cake online… until the holiday season!
If you are unable to join us for the celebration this weekend, but would like to order a cake in time for Mondrian’s birthday, be sure to place your order before noon on Wednesday, March 5th. After that, you will have to wait until December. Or make it yourself! We will be sure to keep you posted here on the holiday shipping dates, but in the mean time, here are a few a few photos sent to us by friends who have ordered and served the Mondrian cake at their special occasions, and those brave and well-equipped souls who have made it on their own. We hope you keep up the baking, the dancing, using blue food coloring at will and finding time to create your own masterpieces, edible or not.
So rare to see this cake in black + white, but we love these photos taken by Emma Pickering at a fancy 2013 holiday party.
Lost + Found makes the Mondrian cake one Sunday afternoon.
One of our beloved cake testers/cake maker extraordinaire, Ronna Magelson and her brother enjoy the mondrian cake in a 1870’s log cabin!
One of our main ladies at Blue Bottle, JoEllen, brought all her little munchkin nieces and nephews Mondrian cake for the holidays this past year!
We have done several renditions of our cookie wall in the past (yes, cookies… on a wall) but never have we transported that wall to San Jose. Until tonight!
Sketch for Design Sponge cookie wall by Leah and Tess (with colored markers on hand)
So, should you find yourself in the neighborhood this evening, please join us for this spectacle which is part of ARTRAGE, San Jose Museum of Art’s monthly Thursday night party. From 7-10pm admission is just $5 and you can see the exhibition Around the Table, have a drink, get your picture taken in front of a wall of cookies (while eating cookies, of course) and be entertained by Oakland’s own treasure Fantastic Negrito.
We typically fashion the cookie wall to address the theme of the event. I certainly don’t want to spoil any surprises, but I do want to share some of the previous renditions with you here in the hope that it will entice you to come tonight!
Damien Hirst cookie wall based on Amylamine.
Although this cookie wall looks a mess, it was sort of meant to be so. We did this one for the SFMOMA groundbreaking event at the end of May. The cookies were the actual size of the bricks that made up the building and we invited guests to “tag” the wall with edible spray paint.
Here is one we did for the Sprudge California Coffee Cupping that took place last year on the rooftop at SFMOMA. All the cookies are in the shape of the state of California, which when all line up like that sort of resemble neckties.
For tonight’s program we decided to have the flavors and colors of the cookie to reflect some of the works throughout the exhibition on view on the 2nd floor, like chilli pepper, carrot, beet and citrus. Oh, and alfalfa! So if the grandeur of a cookie wall isn’t enough to get you out here tonight, maybe the promise of a green alfalfa cookie will?
You can see all the photos from the evening here, with the cookie wall as the backdrop!