Is it Fall Yet?

I love pumpkins. I mean really love pumpkins. I like the way they look, I like eating them (in pie, ravioli, soup, baked goods, ice cream... ) and I like everything about them (okay, except maybe the stringy stuff inside- that makes my skin crawl.) Of course, since they're a pretty seasonal food, I really only get to enjoy them in autumn. Autumn also happens to be my favorite season, and I honestly spend most of the summer wishing September would hurry up and get here already. (Not that autumn in Florida means anything- leaves don't change, and it doesn't cool down until late October... But I can finally stop feeling like a weirdo for having a pumpkin cookie jar on my counter year-round.)

So, needless to say, when I saw Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale at the grocery store, I almost wept for joy! It was like seeing the first golden orange leaf of the season, or having to put on a jacket on the first crisp, cool day... It was beautiful- the closest thing I'll get here in the tropics to a harbinger of the season to come.
Harvest Moon is brewed by Blue Moon Brewing Company in Canada and is imported by Coors. (If you've never had Blue Moon, I highly recommend it- it's quite good.) The website lists the "season" for Harvest Moon as early September-late November, so we must be getting a sneak peak? I'm not complainin'.

I've never had Harvest Moon before, so I was excited to try it. I was also a little leary, as I have had some very... squash-y pumpkin beers in the past. There is definately an art to balancing the perfect amount of pumpkin sweetness and earthiness without making it taste like a fermented can of Libby's pumpkin puree.

The label is very pretty- it's in the same folksy woodcut-style as regular Blue Moon, but with a pumpkin patch and a more autumnal color palate. The label says the ale is infused with pumpkin, cloves, nutmeg and allspice and brewed using traditional crystal malt. When poured, the beer has a rich coppery color, but really no smell of pumpkin or spice- it just smells like an ale. The flavor at first was very like a nice, malty ale, with just a slight sweetness... it wasn't until I'd swallowed that I really got the faintest aftertaste of the spices and pumpkin. It was good- not overpowering, very refreshing and quite enjoyable. I liked it, but I could have dealt with a slightly more pronounced pumpkin spice flavor, however, I'm glad they erred on the side of restraint. I'd rather have a subtle, pleasantly drinkable pumpkin ale than something overwhelming and vile.
I'd definately buy it again, especially as it's a reasonably priced, easy-to-find brand. I'm sure Harvest Moon will find its way into regular rotation in our fridge this fall.

A Wedding Cake for the Bride of Dracula

For the past three weeks, I've been in an advanced cakes class at culinary school. It's been quite an enjoyable class, except for this week, when I was freaking out about our final wedding cake. We had a short 4-day week, which means we lost a day of production time, not to mention it's summer in Florida, and therefore humid as a sauna in Hell. The humidity wreaked havoc on our (or at least my) gumpaste (which wouldn't dry) and fondant (which tended to get sticky), not to mention my royal icing, which started out a perfect consistency, but slowly absorbed moisture from the air and became gooey and runny. I suppose the end result is, if I can make a presentable wedding cake in 80% humidity, I can do it anywhere.

We were allowed to design our own cakes and themes, provided the cake met certain requirements- it had to have at least two tiers, a handmade topper, covered in fondant, and needed royal icing filigree, a pastillage* component and gumpaste** flowers or fruit.

Since I loooove Halloween and all that spooky stuff, I decided to create a Gothic wedding cake. It was two tiers, a six and a ten inch. The tiers were covered in purple fondant, which I airbrushed so the color faded from purple to black. I then piped the whole tiers in royal icing spiderwebs. The tiers are separated with pastillage, which was hidden with purple and black "dead" gumpaste roses. The whole cake was covered in a swag of lavender fondant, and was topped with a skull and spider that I moulded from fondant and airbrushed. The skull turned out super-adorable, kind of doofy and loveable, and we decided he needed a name. We named him Elliot. It seemed to fit. His spider friend's name was Lenore.

There was more I would have done had time permitted (I wanted to put edible glitter on the spiderwebs), but on the whole, I was really happy with it. I wanted to do something creepy, but elegant, and I think I achieved that. (The Chair of the Pastry Program said it was "elegant, but bizarre" and laughingly suggested that the school offered free counseling, if I felt like I needed to talk about anything.)
*Pastillage is a dough made from powdered sugar, glucose and gelatin that can be rolled out and cut into shapes and then dried. It dries very hard. It's good for cake toppers and also for making separators for the tiers. It's basically the same stuff that Necco wafers and candy cigarettes are made of, only unflavored.

**Gumpaste is a dough made from powdered sugar, glucose and gum tragacanth. It's used mostly for moulding flowers and fruit on cakes. It dries firm, but not hard. It's technically edible, but it doesn't taste too great, plus with the amount of touching required to make flowers, I wouldn't recommend eating it.