edible dessert for "Surreal Picnic"?

June 13, 2012 4:12 AM

I need to make an edible dessert for "Surreal Picnic". Help.

I need to make an edible dessert for my daughters art class "Surreal Picnic" tomorrow. I haven't got a clue what to do. All ideas greatfully received, ideally ones that only need me to go to the corner shop.

posted by priorpark17 to Food & Drink (17 answers total)

Make chocolate covered Brussel sprouts. Some people actually liked this, even if it sounds quite surreal, and Brussel sprouts with (Belgian?) chocolate may point to the fact that surreal painter René Magritte also was from Belgium. Serve with one green apple and a hat as table decoration.
posted by iviken at 4:34 AM on June 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

In the vein of the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse you could combine a third of a pie, a third of a cake, and a third of, say, a streusel on a single plate.
posted by monkeymadness at 4:38 AM on June 13, 2012

Buy a pie. On a card to display below the pie, in really nice cursive, write: "Ceci n'est pas une pi(p)e."
posted by phunniemee at 4:41 AM on June 13, 2012 [11 favorites]

Pound cake "French fries" (chips) with raspberry "ketchup". If you can slice a plain store-bought cake into fries, toast them, and whiz some berries and sugar into a sauce, you can do this.
posted by dywypi at 4:46 AM on June 13, 2012 [6 favorites]

Use marzipan to make the melted clocks from The Persistence of Memory
posted by XMLicious at 4:47 AM on June 13, 2012

The Dali museum in Figueres, Spain would make a good model for a cake.
posted by rongorongo at 4:55 AM on June 13, 2012

Response by poster: all good ideas. ta very much.
posted by priorpark17 at 5:34 AM on June 13, 2012

Riffing on iviken's idea, perhaps you could recreate "The Son of Man" in fruit? An apple on the bottom, a slice of grapefruit for the hat brim, and a half a round fruit for the top of the hat, all held together with toothpicks?
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:46 AM on June 13, 2012

Dywypi's "things that look like other things" is the way to go. There are quite a few such recipes that crop up around April Fool's Day -- a sampling:

bacon and fried eggs made out of melted white chocolate chips, yellow M&M's, and Tootsie Rolls and caramels mushed together

a "chicken pot pie" made out of pie crust, vanilla pudding and a handful of candies

a sushi assortment made of cake, coconut, and different kinds of fruit leather and Swedish fish

A cashew chicken stir-fry made of fruit leather, sunflower seeds, cashews, and dried apple
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:48 AM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

You could make a cake that looks like a pizza.
posted by Dragonness at 6:02 AM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was going to say persistence of memory too, except with a pizza draped over something and toppings for numerals/hands
posted by MangyCarface at 6:03 AM on June 13, 2012

Fish bowl gelatin.
posted by defreckled at 6:04 AM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Sneaky Food Cakes group on Flickr might inspire you.
posted by Dragonness at 6:09 AM on June 13, 2012

The author of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry, liked fish. For a bit of an update you could try whole smoked sole with googly eyes.
posted by bdc34 at 6:38 AM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Perhaps you could make a seasonal dessert out of season, like Christmas cookies? Or a Bûche de Noël, which has the benefit of a cake looking like something else.
posted by topophilia at 8:09 AM on June 13, 2012

How, I guess you would say, advanced is this class? Because, really, the surreal answer is something like a 1980 VW Beetle with seven chihuahuas in it.
posted by cmoj at 10:36 AM on June 13, 2012 [5 favorites]

Chips and salsa.
posted by scose at 10:40 AM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]