July 4th NOMfest

The plan for the Fourth of July was to have a potluck at Star & Simon’s, then go up on the roof to watch various fireworks shows. Instead, it stormed and it was difficult to tell the fireworks from lightning. And standing in the rain trying to figure out the difference sucked.

But the NOMfest went on as scheduled. So, funny story, after taking pictures of CAKE in progress, I forgot to bring my good camera. So most of these are taken with my crappy camera. The screen wasn’t working so I just had to point it and guess if the subject was going to be in frame. You’ll see…

What better excuse to bust out the crazy food coloring than July 4th? Here is CAKE in progress:

cake in progress

And frosted. I wanted to spell ‘merica, fuck yeah! in blueberries, but didn’t think I had the space or blueberries to pull it off.

Patriotic CAKE

Mmmm…beverages with and without alcohol:

beverages

Star & Simon made oyster mushroom calamari?? What, what??

Oyster mushroom calamari

And jalapeño corn balls with cheeze in the center. Work that deep fryer!

jalapeno corn balls

Hello, appetizers. Fried plantains with a dill dip and crackers with Gutenfleischer’s pimento cheeze.

Kevin working the deep fryer. See what I mean about the crappy camera?

And here is one of my half cut off plates of food: king ranch casserole, artichoke potatoes, greens raw and cooked, jalapeno corn ball, and some kind of macaroni thing.

Fajitas and chipotle fruit kabob.

CAKE, all busted into.

Oh, and there was more food too. Steph brought a delicious apple pie with cheezy crust. Lisa’s raw peach cobbler was amazing. And there were cupcakes I didn’t even get into. And I’m probably missing some things. Wow, I shouldn’t have written up this post while hungry. Now all I want is a big hunk of CAKE.

This CAKE loves the USA

Ever since I saw this picture, I’ve been obsessing over vibrantly colored cake batter. What better excuse than a 4th of July gathering to experiment. I gave the batter a light lemon flavor with zest and extract. The frosting was just vanilla, mainly because I ran out of lemon extract. Strawberries and blueberries on top rounded out the red, white and blue theme. All in all, it was a hit. I need more excuses to bake cakes. Excuses that involve it not being left in my house.