Tuesday, July 20, 2010

guest post: lucky lady & m. labee

[This week's guest post is by my sister, Lucky Lady, who makes the prettiest aprons you'll ever cook in, and the lovely M. LaBee, who I plan to one day kidnap and imprison in my kitchen, where he will spend the rest of his life baking for my pleasure. Lucky Lady and M. LaBee have teamed up here to...oh, you'll see. I will hopefully be back later this week with another delicious cold soup to share with you, but if I don't have time to post, Team Zucchini on Top, as they're called, tell me there's plenty more where this came from. And thank god for that, because it apparently takes a village to write a bl*g.]

Homage to Peanut

As you may or may not know, we (M. LaBee and Lucky Lady) are the godparents (well, we may have decided we were the godparents, not told anyone, and had him baptized on our own time, but who’s counting?) of a little dog called Peanut (you may know him as Chester Arthur Miller). It also turns out we are a guest-bl*gging superteam heretofore known as “Zucchini on Top.” Being that we are superbl*ggers and Peanut’s godparents, we decided to do a guest post in the little man’s honor. We looked high and low and found this charming book,


which had the perfect recipe for our homage to Peanut. So the two of us trotted on down to the farmers market to shop. Most of the ingredients we needed for the PupCakes have a very short growing season, but we managed to find everything we needed:


We started by making the bodies of the PupCakes with a special cake recipe called Betty Crocker Super M@%#t (for those of you who don’t know, for M. Labee and Lucky Lady the word moist is a lot like the word bl*g for our bl*g mistress—disgusting) to which we added eggs, oil, and water. Then, being the hard workers that we are, we mixed the batter by hand instead of using the beaters.


Next we filled the PupCake pan with batter:


Once the PupCakes were safely nestled in the oven, M.LaBee decided he needed to eat the batter that was left in the bowl. “What are you crazy? Have you ever heard of a little thing called Salmonella?" Lucky Lady asked. Apparently the answer was no, because here is what happened next:


Halfway through the baking of the cupcakes, the professional baker on the team (M. LaBee) decided the PupCakes needed to be rotated (who does this?):


The PupCakes came out of the oven in a blaze of glory not unlike the blaze that the Down East Dilletante’s car went up in, except that they weren’t on fire at all, we just wanted to give DED a shout-out and let him know we were thinking of him and his burned-up car.


While the PupCakes were cooling we went about the business of coloring the dough for Peanut’s appendages. This was a long and arduous process that involved lots of Lucky Lady yelling at M. LaBee things like “Hold her down!” and “More! Faster, goddamn it!” and “You are going to have to shake it harder if you want anything to come out.” All of a sudden it seemed like we were making a weird porn instead of dough, but we are a team that really likes to give it all we’ve got:


Then there was the rolling and cutting of said dough:


The end result of the cut-out dough pieces was weird and even a little gross looking, but we promise, it all comes together:


Halfway through the baking of the appendage dough we realized we were out of peanut butter, which we needed for the frosting (Peanut’s coat). So, much to M. LaBee’s delight and Lucky Lady’s horror we had to make a trip to Mac’s Market. It should be said that the village where Lucky Lady lives was without a grocery store for a number of years. Shortly after LL and her mister moved to the village, Mac’s Market opened with the promise of providing groceries. It didn’t, they lied. Lucky Lady thinks it is basically an overgrown convenience store but M. LaBee disagrees and describes this horrible store as “Nirvana” and the “Lady Gaga of grocery stores.”

This is a picture of M.Labee driving Lucky Lady’s car and laughing maniacally about his Mac’s trip windfall:


A hardhat Lucky Lady forced M. Labee to wear in this photo as punishment for being so gleeful about said trip:


Once home again, we focused on the frosting: We had to mix peanut butter with vanilla frosting in order to get the proper shade for Peanut’s coat:


Then we frosted those bitches:


Now, I bet you’re wondering how that is going to become a PupCake. Well, frankly, so were we. A bit of panic ensued, there was some yelling and running around, followed by a dog escaping the house. Once we had the dog safely stowed we put the PupCakes on some white paper to get a clean slate to look at:


Then magically, this happened:


PupCakes! We love you, Peanut!

7 comments:

  1. Omigod, those are the most adorable little things I have ever seen! Who knew that m@$*t cake mix could be transformed into mini Peanuts. Well done, Zucchini On Top. (Now tell me what on earth that name means.)

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  2. Ahhhh, 'tis a slippery slope. First bacon grease and then cake mix. What will it come to? The next guest blog to be written by Ronald McDonald?

    On the other hand, how creative is that little cake-dog? Did you see one has teeth. Ode to Abe?

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  3. This story made us hoot with laughter! You two are a scream and would make a great comedy team. We can just picture the two of you running around and yelling with lots of drama involved. The pups came out great and look too good to eat.

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  4. they have feet?!?! i love them! and, rotated? who DOES do that?

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  5. Dear Lucky Lady & M. LaBee,

    Three things:
    1) I'm your biggest fan! I'll follow you until you love me (and no, I did not steal that from Gaga. That would be weird.)
    2) Those PupCakes look almost as cute and delicious as the Peanut himself!
    3) I want a Zucchini on Top t-shirt. Right now, please.

    xoxo

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  6. I have to agree that they look too good to eat, but I'm curious - were they delicious?

    I also will fight LMC for the title of 'biggest fan' - this Dynamic Duo is too hot to handle!

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  7. the pupcakes came out great. do you guys do commission work? cause i think the church street market place is looking for a big joe burrell-cake. maybe thats too much for team zucchini on top... i guess i'll have to ask team hey do you wanna go try on swimsuits?

    ;)

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