Here's a fun question from Lorysa!
My birthday is coming up and I'm planning a "Through the Rabbit Hole" themed party. I'd like to serve nothing but trompe-l'œil foods, such as a birthday cake made of meatloaf, and "spaghetti and meatballs" that's really made of cake. However I'm really stuck for other ideas. Do you know of any other great "tastyfake" recipes or ideas?
We never in a million years thought we'd ever post a photo of McDonald's french fries on this blog. Fortunately, we still haven't: those supposed fries above are actually toasted pound cake strips with raspberry dipping sauce!
There are lots of good ideas like this one in this Flickr set we found. It includes the ubiquitous meatloaf cake, and we must say it's one of the prettier ones:
• Food masquerade party - Be warned, though: there's plenty of gross-out stuff in this Halloween party spread, too.
Most food ideas like this, Lorysa, are indeed either tied to Halloween or April Fool's Day, and they often involve that gross-out factor. (Litterbox cake? Gag.) So we do challenge you to do this tastefully; surely there are plenty of beautiful and inspiring ways to make food look like something else. Think of those famous medieval feasts with sculptures of food shaped like fish and swans.
Or you can just stick with a bowl of cereal, like this one:
• Is This Really a Bowl of Cereal? - It's not, but it actually does sound pretty good.
Here are a couple more online resources for "tastyfake" food:
• April Fools' Day Dinner - Includes candy bars that look like fishsticks.
• April Fools' Day Food Pranks - Including a fake fried egg, green beans made out of Jolly Ranchers, and pretend grilled cheese.
Any more ideas for Lorysa?
Related: Happy April Fools Day 2008 From The Kitchn!
(Image: Flickr member yi licensed for use under Creative Commons)
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
for my 5th birthday, my mom made mini hamburgers from vanilla wafers, green tinted coconut, and peppermint patties. i thought they were the best!
view pedalpowered's profile
I remember reading an article years back (maybe Sunset magazine?) and they made a pizza with round philo dough, grated white chocolate, raspberry sauce, and something for the pepperoni.
view jake95825's profile
Per pedalpowered, you can make mini burger cookies using this recipe. Found the recipe on one of my fav craft n' food blogs, JustJENN.
Good luck and enjoy!
view Lorena in SD's profile
Charmian Christie had a great gag food item today in her blog that epitomizes the scary side of this through the looking glass theme:
http://christie-corner.blogspot.com/2009/02/anti-theft-lunch-bags.html
BTW, if any Kitchn writers and readers would like to enter my contest, drop by my blog before Friday:
http://danamccauley.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/good-clean-fun-a-contest/
view Dana McCauley's profile
Foodnetwork's Dinner Impossible show had an episode where Robert Irvine prepares a fakeout dinner for a magician group. I can't remember much, but I do remember something looking like a scoop of ice cream with chocolate sauce and it really was mashed potatoes and gravy.
view soco's profile
In Canada there was a show on the Food Network called the Surreal Gourmet, he made all sorts of fake out dishes. I found the website which lists all his food creations, but no recipes: http://www.bobblumer.com/sgdishes.html
view Sisero's profile
Candy Sushi
http://candyaddict.com/blog/2005/11/22/sushi-shaped-candy-koo-ki-sushi/
http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipes/kids-recipes/kids---candy-sushi/article.html
view kimg924's profile
there's a really popular dish in germany called "spaghettieis" which consists of vanilla ice cream pressed through a "spaghetti press" (a potato ricer works best) topped with strawberry sauce and sprinkled with coconut "parmesean" or grated white chocolate. delicious!!
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Spaghettieis_fcm.jpg&filetimestamp=20070514163310
view american wolpertinger's profile
Rachel Ray did an article in her october 08 issue, check out the ham and tomato pie, sausage meatloaf cupcakes, ricotta waffles, and fudge cookie sliders!
view JennaB13's profile
I remember Bob Blumer on the show Surreal Gourmet did some great fake food like this. The one I remember most was mashed potatoes that looked like a baseball, but I know there were others as well.
view Jennybeen's profile
I just saw this cheeseburger cake via Serious Eats. There isn't an actual recipe but if you check out the original blog post, there are some details provided about how it was constructed.
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/02/fruit-enhanced-double-cheeseburger-cake.html
view jazzybel's profile
I like to amuse myself and irritate my children by addding raisin ears and thin spaghetti whiskers to baked sweet potatoes or beets that have a nice long root-tail. But that might be a better Halloween dish.
view Kate (NC)'s profile
Meyer lemon pudding, meyer lemon curd, and toasted cinnamon cake slices masquerading as eggs and toast.
From the Eggs on Sunday foodblog:
http://eggsonsunday.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/april-fools-eggs-and-toast/
view Cins's profile
Poutine! Its actually french toast fingers arranged upright in a bowl, smothered with with a sauce made of 1/2 cup butter melted in saucepan, add 1 cup brown sugar, dash of salt and stir constantly until sugar is dissolved. Turn heat on medium and boil 2 minutes. Add 1oz whiskey and 1/2 cup maple syrup, bring to boil, stirring frequently until sauce coats a spoon. Let cool slightly before pouring over french toast fingers....and then sprinkle with white chocolate chips.
I haven't made it yet so I don't have pictures available.
view LaurieLu's profile