Brief Remodel Update: The cabinets have been moved from the storage building to the house, and they have taken over our living room. We began moving things around upstairs, to make some room for storage, and the sink should arrive soon. My father will be drawing out the rewiring plan and plumbing plan before he goes to the races. (I should make racecar cookies, those would be killer.) In the next week the kitchen will be taken apart, meaning here in the Kitchen, there may not be a lot of cooking posts with pictures because everything will need to be grilled. No stove at all for us for at least a week.
I have a friend who doesn’t believe that food can be cute because food is just food, we will call her “P”. I respectfully disagree, and I show her cute food all the time in an effort to prove her wrong. P still insists that even the most adorable cookies, cakes, and candies are not cute. Even food with carefully crafted animals is not cute. We are forced to conclude that P has a heart of stone. So this post is dedicated to her.
My first introduction to “cute food” came at snack time when I was perhaps five or six, or at least that is what I recall, and I must admit, it wasn't very cute. But in all honesty, I despised celery and raisins, and I wasn’t a peanut butter fan even then; so the idea of those things combined did bias me. The adults had made these celery bugs, and I was disgusted. I may have been the only one in my class not pleased with the sticks of celery filled with peanut butter, with raisins stuck on for eyes and regular pretzels for wings and pretzel sticks for legs. They even forced us to create one, in hopes that we’d be terribly excited by our fun and healthy snacks. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled with these things, and to this day I still believe that they were not cute. But this does not deter me from believing that food can be cute.
I believe that food is a visual experience, and I have always had a passion for cute and pretty food. I like nice presentations and decorations. Cute food is my guilty pleasure, and you can often find me browsing sites like tastespotting, cooing over adorably shaped and decorated desserts. To be honest, other than some really fabulous lip cookies decorated in nonpareils and red sugar, and some adorable girl and boy shaped cookies, I’ve never had the opportunity to make really cute food. I cannot wait to create some. Royal icing, fun equipment, pretty decorations, and lots of experimenting here I come. I’m so looking forward to it. That is after the kitchen is finished and I have some money in the bank again. But I digress, lets talk about the point of this entry, which is the question I posed in the title.
As I said earlier, I think food is not only an experience of taste and scent; it is also a visual experience. Colors, textures, shapes, all of this is important and adds to the quality of the food experience. Maybe that seems crazy, but personally, I am slightly repelled by ugly food, unless it smells delicious. I am drawn to lovely golden brown pie crusts with small leaves and designs and cakes with smooth frosting and delicately piped trim. I am a sucker for shaped cookies with smooth royal icing and neatly piped designs. Macarons, not to be confused with macaroons, are probably the prettiest and cutest simple cookies I’ve ever seen come out of a kitchen. They are something that I have been dying to try. In fact, it was that very cookie that sparked the cute food debate in a conversation. P declared that macarons looked nasty after seeing a picture of them in bright colors, and we began to argue because most of us were talking about how pretty and adorable they were.
So what makes food cute? Is it the size? The shape? The color? I think it’s a combination of all of that, really. I think small cookies with pretty colors are adorable, like macarons, and I think cookies with fun shapes and decorations and designs are fabulous too. If I wasn’t terribly lazy, I would go an find the cutest foods I’ve seen lately, but that is a big job. I’m just too tired to deal with that. Over all, I think I need to apologize for the lousiness of this post. It lack wittiness, humor, or anything of any interest. So, I’m sorry. I will do better next time.
What do you think dear readers? Can cute food exist? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
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