Faking your food
Making foods look like others popular trend
Charcuterie chalets and cabins have been flaunted on Instagram as the gingerbread house of 2020. Instead of using traditional gingerbread cookies, this house is built with crackers, cheese, meats, and anything else that comes to mind. Challenge accepted.
Not wanting to miss out, travel and food content creator Cailin O'neil, who runs the Nova Scotia Explorer blog, decided to make her own charcuterie gingerbread house for her annual Christmas potluck with friends.
The Halifax, N.S. woman found a cracker recipe and made her own cheddar and Parmigiano cracker base for the structure. Then, she used a mix of Boursin cheese and cream cheese as the mortar to hold it all together. She topped it with some Italian charcuterie and cheese, finishing it all off with some Parmigiano Reggiano for snow.
Along the way, she learned a few things. For anyone else who would like to attempt this, she says that the cream cheese and Boursin mixture can definitely make your creation a bit soggy. She advises either using it minimally or waiting until the very last minute to put it together before serving.
If you're making your own crackers, roll the dough thinly, as it puffs up a lot. And, she adds, the more things you can come up with to decorate the chalet the better.
“My friends thought it was hilarious,” says O'neil. “It was sad to take it apart, but the delicious reward was worth it.”
TRANSFORMATIVE FOODS
This notion of making one's food look like other things is not a new concept. It's something parents often do as an April Fool's Day gag, when they made a canned pear look like an ostrich egg. Gina Bell, who runs the East Coast Mommy blog in Antigonish, N.S., turned a pound cake into a fake grilled cheese sandwich.
“Use slices of pound cake and icing tinted with red and yellow food colouring for the cheese,” says Bell. “You could also toast the pound cake for a more authentic look. That's it - easy peasy.”
Not all attempts to make food look like other items is used for a joke. It can also be serious business. Sometimes, it's turning fruit into caviar for an event.
Amber Labonte runs Cakes by Amber in Charlottetown, P.E.I. and caters to weddings, birthdays, and anniversaries mostly, but if someone is looking for a good quality sweet treat, she's there to support that as well.
She's also skilled at making a fruit-flavoured caviar as a topper for desserts to enhance flavours that are subtle within the dessert itself.
Labonte says it's made by putting oil in the fridge for about 24 hours to cool it. Then, in a saucepan, boil the fruit juice of your choice - freshly-squeezed is best - and add agar until it starts bubbling and reaches a thicker consistency.
From there, fill an eyedropper or squeeze bottle and drop the fruit mixture into the cold oil, a drop at a time. You know you have your ratio right if it forms little beads in the oil sink to the bottom.
Finally, strain, rinse with cold water and then you have delicious flavour-popping decals that look like caviar, she explains.
IS THAT A CAKE?
Another trend is to make cakes look like other foods. Through her business Sugar Rush - Unique Custom Cakes based in St. John's, N.L., Lisa Bowen Ings focuses on custom-made cakes, and sometimes that involves having them resemble other food.
Bowen Ings says she first learned about making cakes and cupcakes that look like other food from the 2008 book Hello, Cupcake!
Because we eat first with our eyes, we are attracted to food that is visually appealing, she says.
“If a food looks like another food, this puts an interesting twist on the first sensory criteria we use to make decisions about the food we eat. If a cupcake looks like a chicken drumstick, it's somewhat unnerving but so fun to eat,” says Bowen Ings.
Labonte also gets requests to make cakes look like other food. She once made a burger cake using a vanilla cake as the buns, chocolate fudge brownie cake for the patty, yellow pastry cream for mustard, red gel Chantilly for ketchup, fondant for veggies, and frozen buttercream as sliced cheese.
Melanie Sora, from Hebbs Cross, N.S., has also created all sorts of sculpted and themed cakes and cupcakes through a business she ran when she lived in B.C. She once made cupcakes that looked like sliders for a BBQ and people thought they really were little hamburgers, she says.
To get started making cakes that resemble other food, Sora says to do your research and practice.
“If you want something to look real, understand the scale of things,” says Sora.
Watch shows or videos to get an idea of how things are done, and if you are serious about it, enrol in a class or workshop, she advises.
Bowen Ings also suggests joining Facebook groups related to baking and decorating where you can ask questions. Overall, she says, the process is not particularly difficult as there is so much information out there on how to do it.
SUPPLIES
As for supplies, Bowen Ings says you can usually find everything you need at stores like Bulk Barn, Michael's, and Winners.
Sora uses pottery tools, paintbrushes, cookie cutters, and silicone molds to make her cakes.
"Basically, anything you can use as a crafting tool can be applied to cake making," she says.
Labonte recommends picking up piping tips and tweezers to help with fine details. Nothing has to be expensive, adds Sora.
It takes practice to recreate food, but as Bowen Ings says, it doesn't have to be perfect when you're starting out.
"Just have fun with it," she says, adding that making it a family activity could be fun as well.
It all comes down to time management, says Labonte.
"You have to trust your abilities and the process. Stay positive. And don't forget to add love and care to what you do," she adds.
HOW-TO
Try making meatloaf look like cupcakes
Amber Labonte of Cakes by Amber suggests making meatloaf in muffin pans and then pipe on mashed potatoes as the "frosting." Add a ketchup drizzle and use peas as sprinkles.