Hello, clowns!
Sorry about last week’s radio silence, but it was a brutally hard week for us in different ways, and I didn’t have the heart to crack jokes. I’ll go into the specifics after this week’s shenanigans down below, but for now, let’s have our usual dumb fun.
First of all, here’s a brief recap of all the cool things that happened last week, and there were a bunch: I was on the Chewing podcast, hosted by Louisa Chu and Monica Eng, two Chicago reporters that I’ve looked up to well before my writing career even began. If you want to hear my dopey voice talking about my shenanigans, here you go!
And, speaking of Chewing again, I was on a live Twitch stream with them too, talking about stuff like Food is Stupid. You can see my face and hear my voice! This is not all. Food is Stupid was also featured on a Korean podcast, from an email transcription service called heybunny.io, which translates email from Korean to English (and I believe vice versa). Unless you’re a native speaker of Korean, it’s not going to mean anything to you, but, listen anyway. You can at least pretend you understand Korean.
And finally, yes, there’s one last thing: John Carruthers of Crust Fund Pizza (who you may remember from our pop-up) and I teamed up to make a super secret pizza. It sold out in three minutes (!!!) and benefited Community Kitchen and Canteen here in Chicago, who have been feeding hungry people ever since this pandemic started and are now making up to 4,000 meals a week for those who need it.
This was the pizza: Samgyupsal (pork belly), sausage, green onions, perilla, sesame seed salad, and garlic ssjamjang giardiniera mayo. I’m exhausted.
So, the other week at The Takeout, I learned that people bake cakes with a secret ingredient in them, and it’s…baby food. I guess that makes sense. I mean, baby food is just mashed up plain adult food, like fruits and vegetables. Babies must learn to eat this food so they can grow. So we teach them how to eat solid food by giving them things that they later learn to avoid as adults. However, all these nice baby food cakes that people make generally involve fruit.
I said to myself, “Dannis Ree, as the greatest food writer in all of history, you know that baby food cake is probably fine. However, nobody has tackled cake made with meat-based baby food. Obviously, you must take on this challenge immediately.”
Now, you all probably know by now I generally avoid baking.
One, I’m terrible at it, and two, I don’t really eat that much sweet stuff. Cookies and cakes and stuff mostly go to waste in our house. But a meat baby food cake? Could this be the solution to my baking aversion? Time to find out, dicknuts!
I looked on the internet for decent-looking versions of this cake recipe to tweak, and settled for this one from Allrecipes, called Baby Food Cake III. I do not know what happened to Baby Food Cakes I and II, and I am concerned for their well being.
The recipe calls for flour and spices like cinnamon and cloves, so I decided to replace that stuff with cheap Italian seasoning and garlic powder.
I bet in Italy everyone would scoff at our use of this Italian seasoning and call us all numbskulls. I highly recommend they read this.
As I wanted this to be a real cake, I did not fuck around with the eggs, oil, or sugar and kept them as-is.
This is called respect. Oftentimes people look at recipes online, replace every ingredient with something else, and complain loudly that it was terrible. I honor recipes by adding turkey baby food to them.
I did not realize turkey-based baby food was so pink.
It looks terrible. It smells terrible. No wonder children grow up resenting their parents.
The liquid portion of the recipe smelled horrendous.
This did not feel like the beginning of a cake. It felt like the beginning of an unholy ritual where I would summon Guy Fieri, who would pop out of the corner and say something about slapping someone in the mammajamma with a hot dog from Flavortown.
I simply blended the dry ingredients with the wet ones, and realized that something felt off.
Is mixing cake batter supposed to be difficult? Because at some point it started to feel like a challenge. This shit was thick as hell. It felt like I was mixing cement. I looked over my shoulder to see if Guy Fieri was watching.
I coaxed the batter out into a floured pan and stared at it.
Cake batter is supposed to, like, fill the pan, right? This was as far as it got. I felt dejected. I told you, this is why I do not bake often. While I am the greatest food writer ever known, I also the worst baker ever known. I seasoned the cake with my tears before I put it in the oven.
In America, it is illegal to make a cake without frosting it.
I had leftover cream cheese frosting from that shitty Froot Loops pizza from a few weeks back, and some jarred roasted turkey gravy. This was a turkey meat baby food cake so it needed the proper frosting. Obviously.
Man, you experience a lot of emotions by mixing turkey gravy with cream cheese frosting.
The kitchen started filling up with a weirdly delicious aroma. It smelled like cake. But cake with a meat secret.
After baking off the cake for the proper amount of time, I pulled it out and was greeted with this.
So…it wasn’t quite like a cake you can get from a cake mix. I have to say, I was a little let down by Baby Food Cake III. I should leave an angry comment saying I added turkey baby food to it. There needs to be a Baby Food Cake IV.
After cutting into it, I could tell it wasn’t going to be very fluffy.
The texture felt kind of like a dry cornbread muffin. If you knocked on the top of it, it had sort of a hollow sounded that reminded me of the inside of my head. Anyway, I’m the greatest baker that ever lived.
I slathered some frosting on top and dug into the cake with gusto.
After my first bite I hung my head for a second. Then I busted out laughing. This is a normal response to eating something, right? Laughter? If the texture to the cake was correct, it would have been one of the best worst things I’ve ever made. The cake was vaguely meaty but if you didn’t know what was in it, you’d be doing a lot of guessing, and that was one of the best parts about it. The confusion. The turkey gravy frosting was weirdly delicious too. My eyes said, “this is frosting,” while my tongue said, “this is gravy.” This was pure culinary cognitive dissonance.
When we all get back together, I am going to bring this to a party and not tell anyone what it is. People will say, “Dannis, you are easily the greatest baker that’s ever lived. What is this?”
I will say, “This is a meat baby food cake.” You will all look at me in silence, blinking, before the room breaks out in a wild round of applause. Somewhere in the crowd, Guy Fieri will look at me, smiling, while giving me a thumbs up.
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And let’s move onto the things I really don’t want to talk about, but I have to. Like the shootings last week in Atlanta. They have to be acknowledged. During this entire pandemic, I’ve been looking over my shoulder every time I’ve stepped outside the house. Reading the news every day about people who are guilty of looking like me getting assaulted or killed will do that to you. But this shooting is a whole different level of hatred.
Asian women are marginalized, fetishized, and objectified. Combine that with sex work, and you’ve got a subsection of American society that considers Asian women subhuman. To the point where people want to erase them permanently. Please start doing the work, examine how you feel, and make changes to how you think about Asian women, specifically. And donate to any of these causes, send me the screenshot of a receipt by replying to this email (any amount), and I’ll give you a subscription to the newsletter.
Something completely unrelated, but also what kept me from writing last week, is that Handsome Boy Nugget is really, really, sick.
We’re having trouble processing this because of what happened to Cricket not too long ago, but if I get quiet again, please forgive me. Things have been too much.
Thanks, as always, for being with me, and Nugget says hi to all of you. Get your vaccines, everyone.
Thanks for all the love, everyone. He's having a hard day today.
I would try your weird baby food meat cake even though it's all touching. Much love to you and Nugget.