Vegetarian Hot Dog

Almost every day at work, Carrie comments on the lunch menu. She has a love passion constant desire for food that is bad for you and will make it known to the world when there are things wrapped in bacon or grilled cheese (with tomato soup of course). But there is one item in particular that makes her go immediately into a overeater second-lunch mood: hot dogs. She loves hot dogs and criticizes when they make them "too fancy" with mango salsa. So naturally, this was the best choice for her birthday cake.

Before I made this cake, my roommate and brother asked, "Why a hot dog?" Simple answer, "Because she loves hot dogs." It wasn't until I saw their confused faces that I realized how uncommon it is to say that someone loves hot dogs. But if you know Carrie, it's not that surprising.

My version didn't turn out quite as good as the linked one, but I was still pretty happy with it. I bought a couple buttermilk loaf cakes from Whole Foods to save time. But Whole Foods does not sell frosting - it's not fairly traded organic vegan compostable blah blah. So I made my own:

Ingredients:
1 stick butter, room temp
1/2 box of powdered sugar (1.5-2 cups)
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 tsp milk

With an electric mixer, whip the heck out of the butter. Then add the sugar, then the vanilla and milk. Use on everything, yum.

For the dog, I used 3 drops of red food coloring; for the bun, 2 drops of yellow. Of course, I didn't have any regular cocoa powder like the link suggested, but had some hot chocolate mix so stirred that into the bun mixture. That made it a little grainy, which actually worked well for bread. For the ketchup and mustard, I used the leftover yellow and red piping icing from the turkeys. But if I do this again, I think I'll just mix more food coloring in and pipe it on. I had also made some green icing "relish" but it didn't harden quickly enough to use.

In any case, it had the desired reaction. Hot dog cake: two things Carrie loves in one.

Gobble Gobble

As a kid, turkeys were either 1) dry pieces of meat that weren't as good as the ham, or 2) a hand. You know, when you take a crayon, trace your hand, draw some feathers and a little gobble gobble. In that spirit and using this, I set out to make this Thanksgiving a little more cute this year.

I made a few adjustments to the linked instructions:

• Walgreens was out of regular Whoppers, so I used the peanut butter ones instead, which I think worked out better anyway
• I trimmed a side of the top Oreo (like the pb cup) to make it stand better
• I used the Oreo crumbs as the eyes

I brought it to work, Nate's friendsgiving, my family's Thanksgiving, my friendsgiving, and just had a bunch on my coffee table til they turned stale. They were a hit! I should have made more. Except that I felt a little sick eating all the bits and pieces. Next year, I might go healthier.

Happy Turkey!