First up we have Marmalade Meat Balls. You take a crockpot and fill it with 2lbs cooked, frozen meatballs. And then you squirt over it 1 bottle catalina salad dressing, spoon in 1 c. orange marmalade, toss on 3Tbs. worcestershire and liberally sprinkle 1/2tsp. red pepper flakes. The globby mixtures is then stirred, the crockput is cranked up to high and in the blink of an eye (2-3 hours) you have a gelatinous, sweet appetizer. We brought this to our friends' Christmas party, thinking it was a pretty innocuous appetizer. Turns out everyone liked (if not loved) these slimy soft balls, minus one friend Jeremy- which is weird because he loves semi-homemade items like green
bean casserole (blech). The meatballs were soft and mushy, which is not really something I like in a meatball, but they were definitely edible. The only real downside was that the sauce was very goopy and after half of them were consumed, the remaining meatballs had to be fished for with tiny toothpicks- this was gross and I soon stopped eating them.
For dessert, we brought the Star of David Angel Food Cake a.k.a. the Hanukkah Cake a.k.a. the ugly sister of the Kwanzaa Cake. I know what you're thinking- haven't we learned our lesson? Wasn't the Kwanzaa cake offensive and disgusting enough? Haven't we ruined enough perfectly good angel food cake and vanilla frosting? The answer of course, to all of your questions is yes. But that isn't the point. The point is that we committed to this blog and we are going to follow through. And if that means we must make somewhat offensive, wholly inedible desserts in the process, so be it.
So with that I give you the Hanukkah cake: First you take a store bought angel food cake and stuff the crevice with marshmallows. Since we were pressed for time, and the russipie did not specifically call for them, we did not purchase Kosher marshmallows. Now, once the marshmallow center is in place, you carefully, one drop at a time, add blue food coloring to
one container of whipped vanilla frosting. This is of course to avoid making the frosting too blue, and thus unappetizing and unauthentic. The frosting is then delicately rubbed on the cake. Finally, this Smurf-tinted delight is supposed to be garnished with strings of pearls. Not edible pearls mind you, but real ones. They are just for decoration and Aunt Sandy warns they must be taken off before consumption. Beautiful and practical, but alas, very difficult to find at Target. So instead we substituted white M&M's. They don't have quite the same sheen, but on the upside, you can eat them. Jillian did a fantastic job making the M&M Star of David on top. So now comes the "best part"- the taste test! First off, in all fairness, it is not as bad as the Kwanzaa Cake. I think that the absence of apple pie filling and cornnuts here is a big plus. That being said, this is not good.
The angel food cake is sweet. The frosting is sweeter. The marshmallows are also sweet. It is a sugar bomb in your mouth. It is the sugar equivalent of a salt lick. Then there is the texture. The frosting melts in your mouth but the angel food cake is grainy. And then there are the marshmallows. Oh the marshmallows. All chewy and gummy, they just amplify the slight graininess of the angel food. There is too much conflict and competition going on in one bite for it to be enjoyable. Jillian did not find it as unpleasant as I did, and neither did our friend Tony. But they don't have the same texture aversion that I do. Our friend Jeremy, whose house the Smuf cake was constructed in, said the following "That was beyond gross. I don't even want it in my house! Oh, and you better believe I'm salvaging the M&M's before I throw the cake in the garbage today. They didn't ask to be attached to that monstrosity!" You're right Jeremy, they didn't.So until next time keep it Kosher, keep it Smurfy, keep it overpoweringly sweet, and always keep it Semi- Edible!
To point up the tragedy of semi-homemade you should try "totally made from scratch" Green Bean Casserole once in your life. It's amazingly good. For Thanksgiving two years ago I made the Cook's Illustrated Classic Green Bean Casserole (though I used homemade chicken stock, instead of canned as called for) where you make the mushroom sauce yourself. When the family sat down to eat, I could see it in their eyes, "Oh no, not grody ol' green bean casserole!" But everyone had seconds and now they request it every year.
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