radiant fracture

This is a continuation of the experiment in trying to bake treats invented by The AI Weirdness neural net. (Scroll down to cookies post.)

I made two versions, incorporating various perspectives on the notion, including my own preoccupation with yeast and sazerac's suggestion about shortbread and marmalade.



It's all a little rustic and perhaps slightly reminiscent of Mendl's confections in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Draft 1: A Loaf of Quitterbread

This is the big loaf in the photo (since cut into slices)

-Yeast-based nutmeg-flavoured coffee cake recipe from Le Internet
-Orange glaze


I liked this. It had the nice median feel between bread and cake that seemed important for quitterbread.

I do not think I raised my yeast quite right, and the recipe seemed to call for about twice as much flour as was necessary. The result is thus quite dense, but I like dense cake.

I looked at various recipes, including Ghanian butter bread, whence I got the nutmeg.

I think I'll make another draft of this with more spices and more upstanding yeast.

Pro: Definitely gives the sense that I started making bread and then quit
Con: These are clearly slices and not bars.

Can I just layer the slices? I feel like the grain would be going the wrong way or something.

Draft 2: Quitter(short)bread Sandwich Bars

These are the little square things. This is layers of the family shortbread recipe with apricot jam-orange buttercream icing in between the layers, to imitate the picture a little:



There wasn't very much jam (it was a tiny sample jar, not the gift jam) -- hence adding the orange.

I got worried that they weren't fancy enough, so I melted some chocolate and mixed it with pecans and draped that over some of them. Then I realized that I'd forgotten to sweeten the chocolate. However, the layers under the chocolate are so sweet that it doesn't actually matter.

Pro: I mean, shortbread.
Con: These are more bar-y, but still not very bar-y.

What makes a bar a bar?

sazerac's actual suggestion involved jam and royal icing, and that would be more bar-ish. I just didn't have enough experimental jam in the moment. I now have many, many egg whites, so I could definitely try that.

Maybe I want a layer of shortbread, then jam, then cake, then icing...

And other important issues -- sorry. I'm just enjoying fussing about something totally frivolous and low-pressure creative.

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Do you anxiety bake? Does stirring batter induce a soothing flow state in you? Me too!

I also love autogenerated and random language poetry. I don't know what the connection might be. Anyway, here's a mostly nonsensical project.

I'd really quite like to derive real recipes for the imaginary cookies generated by the AI in the latest AI Weirdness post, particularly the following:

• Lord's Honey Fight (which sounds DELICIOUS)
• Fluffin Coffee Drops
• Quitterbread Bars (v. Harry Pottery)
• Merry Hunga Poppers
• Hand Buttersacks
• Hallowy Maples (also delicious)
• Apricot Dream Moles

If a recipe arises that seems workable, I will undertake to make it over the winter break and post the results.

Any thoughts or inspirations? How do the names work for you as prompts for sense-images and baking algorithms?

( Some of the Artist's Renditions )

First Reflections on Imaginary Cookies

The drawing in the post for Lord's Honey Fight shows a sort of cinnamon-roll-esque device. I think that's clever, but I'm not sure it's grand enough for a Lord's Honey Fight. Might that be a big pan of bars like a delicious, delicious field of mediaeval battle?

I'm thinking Fluffin Coffee Drops could be whipped shortbread with coffee flavouring. (I don't love whipped shortbread, but with coffee and a flurky name, maybe.)

Hallowy maples I see more or less as just a dish of cookie full of maple syrup. Maybe maple butter tarts (a real thing I had once and have never forgotten).

I was actually given a jar of homemade apricot jam that seems ideal for Apricot Dream Moles.

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