Favors – Chocolate Wins Every Time

Party favors: When I provide them, I want them to be fun, unusual and–preferably–edible. Jordan almonds are…fine. Personalized M&Ms, potentially quite entertaining. Homemade truffles packaged to match the color scheme and theme of the party? Now we’re talking!

For the Queen of Hearts party, we began with these adorable little boxes from the Hortense B. Hewitt Co.. We were impressed by how well they were made. They fold into shape easily and squarely and they’re incredibly cute.

Party favors: Some assembly required!

Each box comes with a precut length of ribbon with a little hole in the lid to feed the ribbon through. And–somebody was thinking!–the tip of the ribbon is lightly and invisibly reinforced so it doesn’t unravel when you feed it through the little hole. The result: packages that don’t lose their ribbons.

Because this party has an Alice in Wonderland theme, we created little tags for each box that say “Eat Me.”

I’ve tried a number of truffle recipes over the years. You know what? They’re all good. And they are all easy. Easy! Good bittersweet chocolate, good cocoa and cream. That’s all it takes. You don’t need a candy thermometer; you don’t need to worry about tempering your chocolate or any of those daunting other candy-making techniques.

Here’s the recipe I used this time around. So far, it’s my favorite. It came from Gourmet magazine, about three years ago.

11 ounces bittersweet chocolate (56% cacao), divided
2/3 cup heavy cream
cocoa powder for dusting
Any additional flavorings that catch your fancy

Finely chop eight ounces of the chocolate and put in a bowl.
Bring heavy cream to a boil in a small heavy saucepan. Pour the cream over the chocolate, mashing any big pieces with a wooden spoon. Then carefully stir until the ganache is smooth.
Let stand at room temperature until thick enough to hold a shape, about one hour. Drop teaspoonsful on parchment-lined baking sheets, rounding them a little if you like them tidy like that. I personally don’t care–I think the irregular shape looks more truffle-like. If you’re in a hurry, freeze them until firm, about 15 minutes, or refrigerate them for an hour or two while you take care of other chores.

Melt the other three ounces of chocolate and smear some on your hand. Gently rub each chilled truffle to coat lightly with chocolate. The secret to a delicate coating of chocolate is to roll each truffle in a smear of melted chocolate in your hand. (The original directions suggest wearing a surgical glove, and I can see that it would make it easier and tidier to do it that way. On the other hand, I enjoyed licking my fingers when I was done.)

I can pretty much guarantee that nibbling either side of these "mushrooms" will make you larger. Happier, too!

Toss the truffles in unsweetened cocoa powder so they look like their namesakes, freshly dug from the earth. Shake the truffles in a sieve to eliminate excess cacao. Store them in the refrigerator.

I made two batches, for a total of about 50 truffles. I added grated orange zest to one bowl of cocoa and a teaspoon or so of espresso powder to another bowl of cocoa, and tossed half of the truffles in one bowl or the other. It gave them just a hint of additional flavor.

Hazel’s Saturday morning expedition to the Los Angeles flower mart yielded black-and-white polka dot candy papers for the truffles. I stacked two truffles in each little favor box, separated by a flattened polka dot paper. (I realized as I was tidying up after the party that some guests didn’t know there were two truffles in those boxes; a few people ate the top truffle and didn’t discover the one underneath. Hah! More for me!)

Laurie

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From the Queen – An Invitation to Play

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Game Cards, Invitations and Madness

When I first started using a computer (a 286 Compaq – yikes, it was pokey!), I latched onto Microsoft Publisher, which is definitely not the industry standard. Now there are lots of programs for creating cards and manipulating photos. I like Publisher because, well, I won’t have to learn another program, but mostly because it is fun and relatively simple. Not without grief, but not bad. I know that doesn’t sound like a resounding endorsement but I like it.

So when it came time for me to build the invitations, that’s what I used. Laurie and I chatted for several weeks deciding exactly what we needed the invite to say. We had already emailed a “Save the date” alert for Laurel’s party, so we had time to be creative. Since we had planned on a game night, we felt it was perfect to include the invitation as part of the game. Hence the Alice collage.

I opted to line the Tenniel prints next to each other in squares or rectangles and surround them with a border of hearts and another black line cutting border. I then hit “Select all” and copied them onto a page, making them “4 up”. That gave me a playing card look on my page four times. It took a bit of aligning but finally it looked perfect enough to print. I was happy with the results and proceeded on to the invitation side.

This is how the actual invitation looked before all that cutting and laminating

While I would have loved to use both sides of one paper, no amount of manipulating would make it happen, so I ended up printing the invite side exactly as I had done the collage side. Then I trimmed them into individual cards, used double-sided tape to assemble them into a two-sided card, and took them over to Staples, where, for less than $10, I had 25 of them laminated together. I trimmed them when I got home to make them look like the playing cards they were modeled after. Fun!

But that was just the invitation/scavenger hunt card. The packaging added a special note, and I’ll talk about that next!

Hazel

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Oh My Fur and Whiskers! Where Can It Be?

By Mel

Though this Queen of Hearts/Alice in Wonderland party was Laurel’s birthday party, it was not actually held on her birthday–so in a sense, it was an Unbirthday Party! Very nice. As Constant Guest, I participated both directly and indirectly in the scavenger hunt.

I had my invitation with twelve scenes or characters from the two Alice books: Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Guests could find a representation of each picture somewhere in the house. Nothing was hidden, exactly, but the representations were not always what one expected.

The Walrus – As it happened, this was not a figure or picture of an actual walrus, but the cover of the sheet music of “I Am the Walrus.” Coo Coo Ca Choo! For bonus points, you could identify the religious candle with an illustration of Jesus on it. His profession was, of course, carpenter.

The Mad Hatter – A hat very much like the Hatter’s, including the price card, was on the table with the appetizers.

The Caterpillar – A challenge. We had a little windup caterpillar that did not look very much like the one in the book, but it was obviously a caterpillar, so it counted. But then, thanks to the good offices of Laurie’s nephew Ryan, we were able to add a hookah–quite a pretty one–to the table. It was much more obvious than the windup caterpillar, which, in fact, no one noticed at all. No bonus points were awarded.

Three Gardeners – Hazel’s floral arrangement covered that category handsomely, and she’ll tell you how she did it. Suffice it to say, there were red and white roses. Cabbages and kings. Paint brushes…

The Cheshire Cat – The Cheshire Cat has always been one of my favorite Alice characters because he is really the only one who has control over his own life. Most of the others are controlled by their passions. I put out my stuffed Disney cat, as well as the box which held a heat-sensitive mug — it shows Alice looking up at the Cheshire Cat in a tree. If you put hot liquid in the mug the cat disappears. Except for his grin, of course.

The Queen of Hearts – “Off with their heads!” As the ruling monarch, she was everywhere. On the napkins, in the flower arrangements, tucked in among the desserts.

The White Knight – Everybody noticed the chess pieces on the table, but no one spotted the cool puzzle cube of the knight in armor. No bonus points for acuity.

A Tea Cup – Again, Hazel’s flower arrangements concealed a clue. Or in this case, contained it.

Humpty Dumpty – Our friend Barbara gave us three versions of Mr. Dumpty: the first sitting comfortably on our mantel. The second falling. The third in pieces on the ground. None of the King’s horses or men could put him back together. Far from it–we ate the remains in the form of deviled eggs.

The White Rabbit as herald, by John Tenniel

Alice With Flamingo – After a long search Laurie finally found some small tin flamingoes at Joann, a local fabric shop. She taped a card to each one to identify the food the flamingo was standing in.

Oysters – smoked and served, naturally, with bread and butter. We never did learn if they desired to trot home again, because our guests ate every one.

The White Rabbit – There was a nervous silence when Laurie asked for the location of the White Rabbit.
The birthday girl made that image by way of a piece of equipment at Kinko’s called the Zoomer (I’m not making this up). She started with the Tenniel illustration, simplified it via Photoshop, then blew it up to door size and mounted it on cardboard, which Laurie attached to the front door. It was much larger than a life-size rabbit. Yes, you would think it would be hard to miss. Yet miss it we did.

The White Rabbit's tabard acquired red hearts. He was in service to the Queen of Hearts, after all.

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Queen of Hearts: How to Make a Simple Idea Complicated – and Fun!

The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland is a short-tempered monarch who spends a lot of time ordering her minions to behead those who fail her. It doesn’t take much to set her off, either.

In other words, we are not talking romance here!

As we began planning the Queen of Hearts party, Annotated Alice in hand, we found lots of inspiration in the Tenniel illustrations. The fact that Mel is a lifelong fan of the book meant we had a knowledgeable resource close to hand–even if he did whimper periodically because he wasn’t going to be the guest of honor.

We decided to make the invitation one of the games we would play the night of the party. We found 12 Tenniel images and decided to compile a visual scavenger hunt, with each illustration having a counterpart somewhere in the house:

This is the back of our invite with all the clues

Walrus, from “The Walrus and the Carpenter”
White Rabbit
Mad Hatter
Caterpillar on his mushroom, hookah in hand
White Knight (yes, he is from Through the Looking Glass, but we conflated the two books for the party)
Alice playing croquet
Oysters hurrying up all eager for the treat
Humpty Dumpty
Teacup from the mad tea party
Cheshire Cat
Card gardeners painting the roses red
Her Majesty, the Queen of Hearts, presiding crossly over the whole ensemble
Like any good invitation, this one set the tone. Our text added to it. We said:

Her Majesty,
the Queen of Hearts,
Commands Your Presence

The Birthday Will Be Celebrated
Games Will Be Played
Food (Copious Amounts) Will Be Served
Scavengers Will Hunt
Wagers Will Be Placed on the Time of the
Queen’s Arrival

Present This Invitation for
Admittance

Ignore It at Your Peril

Laurie

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The Green Leaf of Courage

By Mel

Laurie usually makes her own salad dressing, and she buys salad ingredients at a local farmer’s market where the selection is always fresh and interesting. I enjoy following her around as she makes her selections — a mysterious activity, like watching a sorceress choose ingredients for her spells. Many of the items she buys for salad include greens that 1) I had never heard of before we met and 2) look as if somebody picked them from among the weeds in an empty lot.

One of Laurie's weird salads. Pretty and, yes, good--but where's the iceberg lettuce?

Many of the green rags of leafy things seem to be related to the hot thistles that Eeyore eats in the Winnie the Pooh books. Other leaves have a milder flavor but may still have an unusual texture — unusual to me, anyway.

Which is not to say I don’t enjoy Laurie’s salads. I’ve gotten used to them over time and often, particularly at the end of a hot summer day, even look forward to them. It’s just that I was brought up eating salads made mostly with iceberg lettuce and dressed with a viscous orange fluid labeled “French dressing” that came straight from a bottle.

Laurie has nothing but contempt for iceberg lettuce, and it rarely graces our table. According to her, it is without flavor or nutritional value or any other interesting attribute. I miss it sometimes, but I find I can satisfy my jones at the mid-range restaurants where Laurie and I occasionally have a meal. At these places a handful of shredded carrots and a few dry croutons serve to enhance the bowl of chopped greens they optimistically call salad; the greens are usually the iceberg of my youth. I enjoy these mid-range salads as exercises in nostalgia, but the truth is, after eating Laurie’s version of a salad, I usually find them pretty dull.

Sometimes a restaurant that has pretensions to being slightly higher than mid-range will perk up a thick wedge of iceberg lettuce with a cup or two of blue cheese or Thousand Island dressing, and then sprinkle cheese or bacon bits — in the really classy places you sometimes get both — over the whole mélange. Such a salad must be carved with a knife and fork, which can be fun.

Eating Laurie’s food is always a wonderful experience, and it is often educational as well. This is certainly the case with her salads. Though I do sometimes wish she would bend her mighty culinary imagination to seeing what she could do with the lowly iceberg.

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I Know Parties, Not Pasta

Overstock.com's (and now my) pasta machine

I recently purchased a pasta roller – something I’ve wanted for years and finally treated myself to for my birthday. But it took me a couple months to try my hand at it, and I must admit – it was a dismal failure!

First, out of my ten or so basic cookbooks in the kitchen bookcase, only three had recipes for pasta. Sauces and accompaniments galore, which I love to create without a recipe, but basic pasta recipes were scant. So back to the basics I went. James Beard had a recipe, and so did the Joy of Cooking, as did my 1950 and 1970 issues of Betty Crocker. None of my chi-chi cookbooks had any recipes at all.

So my niece Madison and I pulled out Betty and made the noodle recipe. Maybe we didn’t knead it enough, maybe it didn’t rest long enough, maybe we didn’t roll it thin enough. Whatever the error of our way, our pasta was tough, chewy and less than the vision I had when I dreamed of making my own pasta. The sauce was judged worthy enough to cover the multitude of ills and both Maddie and her mother said the pasta was acceptable. I’ve had dang good pasta and know it wasn’t.

So now I’m on a quest for the perfect pasta recipe. While I was up in the mountains at a family get-together last week, Vicki’s coffee table sported the Thomas Kellar’s cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home, where I found a recipe for pasta. I considered it – in fact I’m still considering it, not seriously, but I’m intrigued. Twelve egg yolks, 1 egg and 2ish cups of flour. Twelve egg yolks? Really? Thomas Keller is considered the chef’s chef, so of course I want to try it, and after all a dozen eggs is only $4, what do I have to lose? In fact, I think I must try it. I’m compelled. In the meantime, my shiny new pasta machine remains shiny and almost virginal.

I’ll report back.

Hazel

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Yoda, the Valentine’s Day Cat

Posted by Mel
One Valentine’s Day I had arranged with Laurie for us to have our own private party, starting with dinner at some fancy-schmancy restaurant. In those days she lived in her own apartment about a five-minute walk away from mine on a curvy path through a complex of two-story apartment buildings. I was dressed for the evening, and on my way over on foot. For some reason I guess she was going to drive that evening or what happened next would not have happened.

A St. Valentine's Day rescue, Yoda is now 22 and rules her home with an iron paw.

I rounded a corner, and there before me on the sidewalk was a tiny kitten. She looked awful — thin, with scraggly fur and goo dripping for her eyes. This was long before Laurie became involved with Molly’s Mutts & Meows, but she had a rescued cat named Dinah (after Alice’s cat), and anyway, it didn’t take an expert to see that this cat needed help.

Hoping the cat would be safe and stay where he was for the next few minutes, I ran to Laurie’s apartment and explained the situation. Immediately she sprang into action. She was dressed in some hot number for the evening when we returned to the scene with water and cat food. The kitten had either had OK experiences with people or was too sick to care because he ate a little and drank a little and allowed us to pick him up. Without even discussing the situation, Laurie and I knew that it was more important for this cat to see a vet immediately than it was for us to eat a fancy dinner.

And so it was that we spent some hours in Dr. Ken Jones’ office waiting to see the veterinarian and then watching while he examined the kitten–which proved to be female. Laurie and I knew that the goo coming from her eyes meant that she had a respiratory infection, but there were other things wrong with her too, mostly the result of having lived on the street for too long.

We left the kitten in the vet’s care overnight and had dinner at a cheap neighborhood dive. We were overdressed, and we’d spent a lot more at the vet’s than we would have at the fancy restaurant. Over dinner we assured each other that we had made the right decision, and we generally felt pretty good about doing the right thing.

Over the next few days the cat, still nameless, became healthier and perkier. Eventually, the kitten went to live with Laurie’s sister Deirdre. She and her son called her Yoda, on account of her huge eyes and despite her gender. As I write this, Yoda is nearing the age of twenty-two, and according to Deirdre, her hobbies are “demanding wet food. And kicking the dog’s ass.”

We never regretted trading an expensive dinner for the life of a sick cat. And when one of us tells the story of Yoda the Valentine cat, listeners generally agree. Of course, a person who might feel otherwise would not be our friend anyway.

If you would like to rescue a cat or dog for Valentine’s Day, you don’t have to go out and find an animal. Many organizations will do the work for you, and you can contribute to them. Our preferred organization these days is Molly’s Mutts & Meows.

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Cupcake Mania

Posted by Laurie
I just had an entertaining trip to Michaels–we’ve got a brand-new one in Tarzana in a huge space. I found several useful items for the Queen of Hearts birthday party we’re planning (for the sake of our guests, we’re not writing much about it until after the event–when we will share all the details!), and I spent quite a bit of time marveling at the cupcake-making supplies.

Just right for Valentine's Day--chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate frosting--plus a little peppermint.

Of course cupcakes have been hot for several years now, and why not? They’re yummy (at least potentially), they’re cute, they’re fun. I had no idea, however, that you could buy so many ready-made theme toppers for them: paper bride-and-groom figures (for showers?), Disney princesses…the list is long.

But I am something of a purist when it comes to cupcakes. I don’t want a mountain of icing and a dab of mediocre cake. I like some icing and good cake, in proportion. And I think if you’re going to decorate a cupcake, you ought to decorate it with something edible. Preferably something delicious.

It took me a long time to start baking cakes as a adult, which is weird because the very first thing I ever baked was a cake, from scratch, when I was nine. It was a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and I made it for my father–it was his favorite, or so my mother claimed. (In retrospect, I suspect the chocolate frosting was her favorite, not his.) But as an adult, I had an unreliable oven for many years–it had two temperatures, off and arc weld, which just didn’t work for cake, and I stopped making them.

I finally got an oven I could trust to keep an even temperature and I hesitantly started making…cake mixes. It seemed safer. And then last year, I got tired of tasting cardboard box with every cake. I tried various cake recipes. I wasn’t happy with them. Then I went back to the recipes that worked for me when I was nine: the ones in the 1951 Betty Crocker cookbook, which had been a wedding present to my mother.

I’ve been making those old-fashioned three-egg cakes for the past year. They’re great. Here’s my favorite chocolate cake recipe at the moment, slightly modified from the Betty Crocker original:

Chocolate Cupcakes
2/3 cup butter, softened
1 2/3 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/3 cups milk
2/3 cup cocoa
2 cups flour
1/3 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

Heat the oven to 350 degrees, and put cupcake papers in two one-dozen-cup muffin tins.
Cream the butter, sugar and eggs together. Mix together the dry ingredients (do you own a sifter? do it the old-fashioned way and sift in the flour, cocoa, etc. That way you’ll know the baking soda is properly distributed throughout the batter) and add to the butter mixture. Beat them together with the milk for about two minutes, until the batter is thick and smooth and creamy. Distribute equally among the two dozen cupcake papers.
Bake for about 25 minutes, until the cupcakes test done. Cool

White Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white chocolate
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 or 2 teaspoons cream if needed
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt the butter and white chocolate together. You can do this in the microwave if you’re careful. Mix in the sugar and salt and beat until smooth (once again, that old-fashioned sifter comes in handy). Add the vanilla and, if the frosting is a little stiff, beat in enough cream to make the consistency you want. Frost the cooled cupcakes.

I like to sprinkle something fun on my cupcakes: bits of crushed peppermint, chocolate sprinkles, cake decors…you could even use some of those little paper figures. Just don’t eat them.

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Not the Super Bowl

Posted by Mel

I won’t be throwing a Super Bowl party this year. But that’s no a big deal, since I never throw a Super Bowl party–or attend one, either. I’ve never had an interest in football, and I know nothing about it — though I am impressed by some of the technical features of the game as broadcast on TV. For one thing, how is it possible to put electronic markings on the field that the players can walk in front of?

There is sort of a festive air on Super Bowl Sunday even in Los Angeles, a city that has been without an NFL team since the Rams moved to St. Louis. Last year our next-door neighbor put an enormous TV set in his backyard and invited a crowd to watch and cheer and drink. The excitement was tremendous, and a good time was had by all — all in his back yard, anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it again this year.

I am not against parties, but I prefer them with a theme other than football. For example, Laurie and Hazel will soon be giving a birthday party with an Alice in Wonderland theme for our friend Laurel. Laurie says she will try to think of a punch we can call Treacle and Ink (“Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,/Or anything else that is pleasant to drink”). We will certainly have mushroom soup (“one side will make you grow larger, and the other side will make you grow smaller”), among other Wonderland delights.

One year the theme of Laurel’s birthday was Mad Scientists, and many people came in costume. As far as I was concerned, the winner was a bearded guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying a coconut with wires trailing out of it. Glen was normally clean-shaven, so I knew it was part of the costume. Turns out he was masquerading as the evil Professor from the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of Gilligan’s Island. (If you don’t know why that is hilarious, find a friend who is a fan of the original Star Trek and ask him or her about the Mirror Universe.)

I also go to science fiction conventions, which are sort of like big multi-day parties. At these events fans, writers, gamers, and movie people get together to advertise, discuss, and otherwise get involved with stories that may include hobbits and unicorns at one end of the scale, and spaceships and giant robots at the other. Many members show up in costume and drink strange concoctions like blog. I know that these days a blog is a piece of personal writing, but before the Internet allowed everyone to be his own publisher, blog was generally a heady mix of alcoholic beverages — never the same twice.

Many years ago I met Laurie at one of these conventions, and she was kind enough to invite me a party she and her friends were hosting in their hotel room. Food at these events generally consists of chips, soft drinks, and canned dip. But being more interested in Laurie than in what she might feed me, I went. I learned that Laurie’s idea of party food was similar to what Ratty liked to serve in Wind in the Willows. As I recall, there were breads, crackers, cheeses, pickles, meats, spreads, and a variety of drinks, both alcoholic and non. This was my introduction to the wonders of Laurie’s entertaining.

Guys who go to football games and parties sometimes paint themselves blue or wear triangles of cheese on their heads. At a minimum they may wear the colors of their favorite team. And yet many of them make fun of people who wear Star Trek uniforms. I don’t see the difference myself. Why does it have to be either/or? You are a fan of the activity that makes you happy.

On Sunday, I’ll probably watch an old Star Trek episode or go to Disneyland instead of watching the Super Bowl. But please don’t hold that against me. I won’t hold football against you.

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