OBJECTS OF MY CONFECTION, part 1

There are many things I love and most of them are not sweet, literally or figuratively. I have a simple aversion to objects, concepts, colors and people that are cute, or sweet or too, too blechy-silly-girly.

In my business (and infant and children's apparel would certainly be the logical place for cuteness/sweetness, if ever there was one), I have tried to avoid anything close to cute. I take the stubborn 43 extra steps necessary to hand-mix an ink I call "Cha-Cha Pink," which is a very warm, non-Pepto, non-girly hue, and favor visuals like Anvils on onesies.

And, well, I can't tell you how many arguments I have had with people over my teeth-grinding, vitriolic insistence that dreaded symmetry--so often found in tandem with cute and sweet things-- must be eradicted from the earth.

That being said, there are a few things which might fall into the cute or sweet paradigm which even I cannot resist.

One is my own child prancing with dirty feet in these tutus we made together (letting a 4-year-old determined to "help" pin 10 yards of tulle?--not intrinsically fun. You must choose to be joyous above aggravation for the greater good, in that one).

Another is a Floating Island Dessert, the kind with the crazy-beautiful Spun Sugar.

"A floating island is a French dessert consisting of an 'island' of meringue floating in a "sea" of Crème anglaise....It is prepared from whipped egg whites, whose chunks are briefly cooked, and then scuttled into vanilla-flavored custard cream." (Wikipedia)

Aside from the fact that I just plain LOVE the word "scuttled," what's not to like?

The spun sugar crown on this floating island (oh, Martha) is made with beeswax from ebeehoney.com ( a site with all kinds of unbelievable, bee-borne things I covet). It's like a plate of delicate live power lines down; it's gorgeous. But other Floating Islands I've encountered with the sugar are equally, eerily intriguing--and can lure me to otherwise neglected dessert.

I think both of these--the tutu and the wild, spun-sugar island--meet the same criteria, blowing mere cute or sweetness out of the creme anglaise:

A little wild, fragile, asymmetrical, exact results unrepeatable. Much more impressive than the sum of its parts (eggs, cream, sugar, tulle, patience)

Sweet, but not too sweet,

Dirty feet.

Trick-or-Treat!