Duff Goldman to open Cakemix on Melrose

Duff’s Cakemix is about to open on Melrose Avenue this week, a decorate-your-own cake shop from celeb baker Duff Goldman. (Think Color Me Mine or Build-A-Bear, but with cakes.) 

It's next door to Charm City Cakes West -- the L.A. outpost of the Baltimore bakery featured in the Food Network's reality-gateau show “Ace of Cakes” -- which isn't open to the public. 

Cakemix, on the other hand, is for anyone off the street who wants to go crazy with a pastry bag of buttercream. The shop also will sell whole already-decorated cakes, cakes by the slice and coffee. 

Would-be decorators get a baked cake with their choice of cake and frosting flavors. (It costs $36 for a 6-inch cake or $52 for a 9-incher; cupcakes are available, too.) Then have at it with buttercream, fondant, food coloring and sprinkles. Airbrush it in the "airbrush shower," even. 

“It’s for people who’ve never decorated a cake before and want to get creative,” Goldman says.

Click here to read more about Duff's Cakemix.  

Duff’s Cakemix, 8302 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 650-5555. 

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-- Betty Hallock

Photo: Duff Goldman cuts fondant to decorate a cake. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

DIY confab Craftcation lands in Ventura, March 22-25

Need a craftcation? The Craftcation DIY workshop and indie-business conference takes place in Ventura on March 22 to 25. Started by Delilah Snell and her niece Nicole Stevenson, who also co-produce the Patchwork arts and crafts festival, Craftcation is geared toward anyone who is looking to start a craft-based business. Industry professionals will lead business workshops, panel discussions and Q&A sessions.

Events and topics include: how to start a crafty business; maximizing social media; blogging; the ins and outs of indie craft shows; Etsy; wholesaling; merchandising; accounting; legal issues; branding; website design and more. DIY workshops: screenprinting, sewing, canning and preserving, cheesemaking, needle arts, terrariums and edible gardens, organic bath products, jewelry and more. Speakers include Amy Tan, Aida Mollenkamp and Gustavo Arellano. 

Also at the event will be meet-and-greets, pop-up shops, yoga, a barbecue and cocktail socials. See the full schedule here. Registration for a three-day pass is $275 at www.craftcation.com/register.

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-- Betty Hallock

Photo credit: craftcation.com

For the coffee geek in your life: DIY coffee cozies

From the ever-inventive Molly’s Sketchbook  at Purl Soho in New York and the craft shop’s blog, The Purl Bee, charming coffee cozies made from a rainbow of beautifully dyed wool felt. The full instructions are here. It’s an easy DIY project, and an actually useful gift or stocking stuffer that coffee drinkers on the go will appreciate.

What I knew, but hadn’t fully realized, is that Purl Soho’s warehouse is in Orange County — and open for walk-in business during limited hours. Check Purl’s extraordinarily well-organized website to decide what you want and then, list in hand, stop in at the warehouse sometime to shop. Bring a sweater: It's a warehouse, not a shop.

I haven’t made the trip to Tustin yet, but it’s definitely on my list. 

Purl Soho, 15431 Redhill Ave, Suite D, Tustin; (800) 597-PURL. Open Tuesday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. 

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-- S. Irene Virbila
Twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: Felt coffee cozies. Credit: Purl Soho.

Master food preservers host holiday craft workshop

The L.A. County Master Food Preservers program, an initiative of the University of California/Cooperative Extension, is holding a fundraiser,  Gifts for the Holidays, on Dec. 4 at the Homegirl Cafe in Chinatown.

The food-crafting afternoon will feature five demonstrations for 50 attendees, with refreshments in addition to samples of gifts from each demo: food ornaments, liqueurs, gourmet mustards, spiced jams and candied fruits. 

Click here for reservations. The cost is $45 per person. Proceeds benefit the Master Food Preservers program in support of volunteer community education.

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-- Betty Hallock

Exclusive, with photos: A sneak peek at Lindy & Grundy, opening Tuesday

Back in January, we published our profile of Amelia Posada and Erika Nakamura, the cleaver-wielding butcherettes who have been setting up their sustainable meat store on Fairfax Avenue.  Since then the women have been hard at work putting the finishing touches on their butcher shop, leaving the city in suspense for the opening. Some were so antsy, in fact, that they jumped the gun in announcing the opening.

The duo's thousands of Facebook and Twitter followers are likely privvy to the meticulous inspections and multiple bumps in the road that have pushed their opening more than a month behind schedule. But this afternoon we finally received word that Lindy & Grundy Local, Pastured, and Organic Meats is finally ready to peddle its first pork jowls.

Naturally, we wanted to give you an exclusive sneak peak of the shop in its final stages. A virtual tour with smellevision would be helpful, because upon walking through the front doors we were slammed with the scent of smoking cedarwood and roasting meat. Decked out in chain-mail aprons, Nakamura was meticulously breaking down pork parts for house-made sausages and Posada and their two  employees were busy loading the smoker, testing recipes and quartering chickens.

The store, which opens Tuesday, will offer sustainably raised beef, lamb, pork, sausage, poultry, cheese and aged meat. Sausages are being stuffed for opening day; varieties include kimchi pork, sweet and hot Italian and classic lamb. Nakamura's signature "gateway" sausage (part tofu, part chicken) will be available once they settle in. They will sell a house blend of ground beef in freezer cases, along with stocks and other prepared items. The store will also have a rub and spice station where customers can work with the butchers to create specific spice mixtures for the meats they're purchasing.

The doors will be open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, and they plan to have an official opening party within a few weeks. The celebration will be a welcome one, after the series of delays.

"Getting this place open has been our lives." Posada says. "We couldn't have done this without each other."

For photos of their nearly completed sustainable butcher shop, keep reading.

--Krista Simmons

Follow me on Twitter @kristasimmons

DIY: Crewel potholder

Crafty ones (and you know who you are) might want to check out this Dill Potholder crewel embroidery kit from crafters’ emporium Purl Soho in New York City. Available online, the kit includes pre-printed linen canvas, yarn, needles, instructions -- everything except the wooden embroidery hoop to hold the work. Finished size is 7" x 7". 

The embroidery pattern is beautifully drawn and when completed produces a big effect for such a small item. Of course, you’ll want to keep this potholder away from messy roasting pans and anything that might stain your painstaking work. It’s not a potholder, though, unless it’s used. Don’t just hang it on the kitchen wall.

Custom House Dill Potholder Crewel Kit, $15 from www.purlsoho.com. 

--S. Irene Virbila

Photo courtesy of Purl Soho.

 

A Super Bowl stadium built entirely of snacks; I gained 20 pounds just watching

The Big Game Snack Food Stadium - Watch more Big Game Bonanza

Help! My eyes are bleeding! I just watched a 2-minute, 37-second video in which an announcer gives a play-by-play of the building of a 110,428-calorie Super Bowl stadium made entirely of fatty snacks.

Sponsored by Break Media and done in the noble pursuit of "meaningless Internet spectacles," the snack stadium -- snadium? -- consists of a butter-frosted field; stadium seating made of cookies, crackers and wafers; a Hershey bar jumbotron; cold-cut-and-cheese stadium trim; Slim Jim goal posts; hot dog, burger and doughnut fences; Twinkie and Ho Ho tailgaters; a hoagie blimp; and football teams consisting of carrot sticks and uncooked Vienna sausages.

Whew. Since Break Media dubs itself "the Internet's premier entertainment community for men," this borderline psychopathic display of food-based craftiness makes perfect sense. What else will men obsess over if not wrapping a burger in a glazed doughnut and dipping it in frosting while casting come-hither glances at a bunch of uncooked Vienna sausages with green olive football helmets?

Oh, right. Beer. And the big game itself, of course. I'll be watching with a few male companions of my choice and I'll be wearing a miniskirt made of guacamole and a top crusted in corn chips.

-- Jessica Gelt

Video credit: Break Media

Put up or ... : Saving the Season, a new blog about preserves

 
A new Los Angeles-based blog, Saving the Season, celebrates the art of home canning (or "putting up") and all things deliciously jammy -- preserved huckleberries, blueberry butter, white peaches in lavender syrup, apricot jam with maple and vanilla, mulberry-plum preserves and more. 

The blog is about "jams and other fruit preserves, pickles and briny things, canned vegetables (above all tomatoes)," according to its author, Kevin West, who is also West Coast editor of W magazine. Though it's just a couple of months old, there already are several recipes for jams and fruit butters, as well as one for cocktail onions -- for Gibsons, of course.     

It's also rife with good reading, punctuated by canners' secrets (such as the judicious use of gin), literary references (Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Tomatoes"), and even personal advice from Alice Waters ("do everything neatly always").

On Saturday, West and Bettina Birch of BeeGreenFarm will give a free canning demonstration at Surfas in Culver City from noon to 1:30 p.m. They will show how to make peach jam and how to can tomatoes, with a tasting to follow. (Surfas is at 8777 Washington Blvd., Culver City; (310) 559-4770.)

-- Betty Hallock

Photo credit: Kevin West

Cook's Illustrated: Vanilla smackdown

Cook's Illustrated is a favorite among cooks for its practical, no-fuss, no-muss approach to food. For one, there are no ads. Also, with the exception of soft, natural colors on the front and back covers, the magazine is completely black and white. Inside, recipes are deconstructed and reconstructed to make them as fast and easy as possible, but without sacrificing taste (Kinda like a Consumer Reports for food and recipes). Another popular feature is the taste tests that, not surprisingly, often result in the blue ribbon going to a brand or product that is the least expensive one out there.

But the latest taste test, in the March/April issue, seemed almost sacrilegious: Cook's Illustrated found that there was no discernible difference between real or imitation vanilla when used for baking. Here's the article, which would normally be found behind Cook's Illustrated's pay wall, but they kindly agreed to let us use it here temporarily.

Read it and tell us what you think.

Can you tell the difference between real and imitation vanilla? Do you keep one, or both, on hand? If you're looking to conduct your own taste test at home -- in the interest of research! -- here are some dessert recipes to choose from, including two L.A. Times test kitchen recipes that call for vanilla extract: Tall and creamy cheesecake and Auntie Em's coconut cupcakes.

-- Rene Lynch

FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post said that all the images in the magazine were drawn. Wrong! They are black-and-white photos.

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

David Myers to open Comme Ca Bakery; Boule closes

Boule Atelier, the stylish WeHo pastry shop on La Cienega Boulevard, has closed its doors.

Owner David Myers (whose empire of restaurants -- Sona, Comme Ça and, most recently, Pizzeria Ortica in Orange County -- continues to expand) and baker Hidefumi Kubota told the Daily Dish that they would be putting their energies into a new Comme Ça Bakery instead.

Fans of the shop's macarons, chocolate sables and sea salt caramels might ask, why close Boule? "It’s pretty simple," Myers says. "We’ve had incredible demand for our breads. I’m so passionate about what Hide’s doing and he’s so talented when it comes to baking bread. Unfortunately, our location [at Boule] doesn’t give us the right space to delve deeply into bread."

Comme Ça Bakery's retail shop will be down the street from the current Boule location on La Cienega, and is set to open this summer, next to the space planned for Myers' forthcoming second outpost of Ortica. Myers is moving the bread baking operation into a 10,000-square-foot facility in Culver City. (Comme Ça Bakery also will be offering the bread wholesale.)