polka dots and spots meet art

I am excited for the weekend as I have a couple fun things planned.  First off, I think I am going to try baking Smitten Kitchen’s Apple Sharlotka for dessert. Second, I learn to ski and take a lesson!  One of the goals I set in Prague was to learn how to ski.  I haven’t been on skis since I was six years old.  Since Prague is central to so many mountain ranges (in driving distance), I wanted to re-learn how to ski to make the most of my winters in Europe.  There are a few mountains in the Czech Republic and we thought about checking out Spindleruv on Saturday for the day.  Lastly, a visit to the David LaChapelle exhibit at the Rudolfinum in Prague until February. I know if I don’t make a plan to go the exhibit will be long gone before I get there.

Speaking of art, to sign off with something fun for your Friday, I put together the work of two different artists who have both done magnificent things with polka dots:  Damien Hirst, the British artist and Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist.

The first set, is of my favourite painting by Damien Hirst, a picture titled “LSD.” The first shot is actually a play on Damien Hirst’s LSD painting by the famous, British street artist, Banksy. If you don’t know who Banksy is, watch the documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop and you’ll be up to date!

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via geeks on the inside

Next up, a really cool exhibit titled “Look Now, See Forever” that is taking place at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art on now until March 2012 by Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama. In the pictures below, you’ll see the immersive room Kusama created for kids, called “World of Dots.”

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via creative inspiration

Cuisine de Bar by Poilane

For those of you who drool over the aroma and thought of freshly baked bread, which would be most of us, unless you are gluten free, you’ll be excited to read that Poilane, a family run bakery in Paris recently opened a new cafe/bakery/restaurant called Cuisine de Bar by Poilane in Sloane Square in London.

The history of this bakery dates back to 1932 when a young baker from Normandy came to Paris to open a shop. The baker, Lionel Poilane, known for his sourdough bread, achieved success with his breads and even received request for bread from artist, Salvador Dali, who created a house out of bread for him to test if he had mice.  Today, Poilane is still family run and has three locations in Paris and two in London (Cuisine de Bar as the newest edition).

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll recall this is not the first time I’ve mentioned Poilane.  A couple years ago, I wrote about the bakery’s other famous product, their punition cookies , the cookie beloved by home bakers, foodies and Francophiles all over the blogsphere (here, here, and here), that gained a lot of traction after Dorie Greenspan published a recipe for punitions in her book titled, Paris Sweets.

While I am not in London to taste treats from Poilane’s new outpost, lucky me, my fiance will be heading to London in a couple weeks and I am going to send him to test and report back. That’s what I call team work at its finest.

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Adriano Zumbo

There is nothing I like more is a renegade pastry chef with a strong aesthetic and fearless attitude toward pushing the boundaries of flavour combinations and tastes. Enter Adriano Zumbo, the Australian native who studied locally and in France honing his sugar obsession into beautiful things.  He is probably best known for his macaron and offers sensational flavours such as coconut, green chili and lavender, lychee, passion fruit and tonka bean and salted butter caramel.   On the more daring side, he did a pig’s blood and chocolate macaron.

After participating on Master Chef in Austrialia, Zumbo has become a household name beyond his start in Balmain (a suburb of Sydney).  Now the owner of four locations, The Star, Patisserie Balmain, Patisserie Manly, and Cafe Rozelle, Adriano is patissiere-entrepreneur to the max.  He has even branded his macarons calling them Zumbarons, a smart tactic to get customers to keep him top of mind.  If you can’t make it to Sydney to check him out, Adriano recently published a book, dedicated to his world of sugar, titled, Zumbo; I would highly recommend it- however the recipes don’t look easy.

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Qkies + Cookies

For my birthday, my mother bought me a subscription to one of my favourite food magazines, Bon Appetit, and had it sent to Prague.  I just got my first copy two weeks ago and decided to try out their Almond-Cranberry Quinoa cookie recipe in the January 2012 issue.

a little of this

to make these

small taste test

While the recipe was only so-so, not enough flavour (a tad bland) and crunch for my taste, I wanted to post about a funny cookie idea that I read about on The Urban Grocer and Springwise called, Qkies. Qkies is a company based in Germany that was created by Juchem Gruppe and DFKI, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (not your typical baker combination) and makes QR code cookies.

In this new level of technology-meets-cookie, customers can order a box of Qkie mix, bake it in their own kitchen and apply the edible QR codes that come programmed to the website of their choice, which can then be scanned by the end “eaters” by using a smartphone.  The educational video on the Qkies website shows a girl using the Qkies as invitations to a big party she is hosting.  Unique? Yes.  Quite the unique way to invite guests? Absolutely! Now, do I think I would feel a bit funny and uncomfortable “eating” technology like that?  Yes.  While I am sure it is safe to eat, there is something about the idea of eating a barcode that turns me off.  That being said, is eating royal icing dyed with food colouring any better system? In my ideal world, I would like to think so.  What will a little red and yellow dye do to you?

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via cnet

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Something like Byrd’s, seems much more appealing to me.  A one pound cookie jar of homemade cookies.  Just like the convenience of Qkies, you can even order cookies online from Gilt Taste.

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$315,000 Wedding Cake: Black Swan Bakery

Hold the presses.  Here I was, all eager to write a post about the delicious pumpkin chocolate chip bread I baked over the weekend with photos and my recipe to start off my Monday.  My idea and intention has just been interrupted and derailed by a story I just read about a bakery in Beijing called Black Swan Luxury （黑天鹅蛋糕） that sells a wedding cake for $315,000 USD.  My chocolate chip pumpkin bread can wait for later this week.  Doing some basic calculations here, let’s estimate you have a 300 person wedding, that means you would have paid approximately $1,050 per slice of wedding cake.  Last time I checked, wedding cakes ranged in the $7-$15 per slice category for something half decent.  The cake in question from Black Swan Luxury is 70-80 times the price.  Yikes! I wonder how many of these cakes they are selling.  I guess it doesn’t really matter because if they sell more than one, it has generated some significant revenue for the company.

Where did I come by this outrageously priced wedding cake, you ask?  I am a regular reader of the Business of Fashion, a site that specializes in curating a collection of business news articles and interviews about the fashion and luxury goods industries around the world.  Having lived in China and having written my thesis on the Asia luxury goods industry, when I saw the article titled “Chinese are up to speed with life in the fast lane,” published by the LA Times, it caught my attention and I decided to give it a read.  Did I know that one paragraph three quarters of the way down the page would have me nearly falling out of my seat.  Black Swan Luxury is part of the bakery group, Holiland 好利来. Ironically, Holiland’s website, translated in English, means buy cake (买蛋糕)- smart if you are asking people to spend a small fortune for a cake that typically doesn’t even get cut.

While the cake is not my taste, I’m sure Black Swan Luxury will have some eager brides and grooms clamouring for a slice of luxury.  I even found a YouTube video filmed by a customer who shows you a clip of the cake in the window and the wedding consultation area on the second floor.  Happy Monday!

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