Occult Jam – UPDATE awesome levels of outrage

This has made my Sunday – hilarious piece about the Jellymongers Occult Jam, the one made with Princess Diana’s hair,  had a full page 3 in today’s Express (nice to know they are a week behind my blog with them ‘being the first on news’ and all that). It’s worth a read – I have never been more proud of my friends. Read it here.

Best of all I have Lily & Violet staying with me all week (a friends awesome twins) as they are going to Jellymongers for work experience this week – here they are revising!

My lovely friends the Jellymongers are totally fucking awesome in general but have nailed it this time for me: I shall be buying my mother the jam with a hair from ‘Princess Diana’ in it for Christmas.

Since the dawn of time man has struggled to unlock the secrets of eternal life. Occult Jam is a small triumph over mortality. Base ingredients are preserved through their transformation into jam and enhanced with powerful artifacts. The Jellymongers Occult Jam launches at The Surreal House exhibition (more posts on that soon) at Barbican Art Gallery on 24th June.  The jams include the best flavours EVER:

Milk Jam infused with a speck of Princess Diana’s hair

Absinthe and pineapple with sand from the Great Pyramids

Plum and Oak with wood from Nelson’s ship The Victory

Occult jam will be available to purchase from the Barbican Art Gallery Shop – BRING IT ON!!!!

Too smart for sausages

300 Dish Dessert Banquet

If you want to impress the Queen, you have to know how to throw a party, at least that seems to have been Robert Dudley’s thinking over 400 years ago when he put on a three week party for Elizabeth I which was the social event of the age. Kenilworth Castle is celebrating Dudley’s extravaganza and the first birthday of its stunning Elizabethan Garden through the re-creation of one of the festive marathon’s highlights – an ‘ambrosial’ 300 dish dessert served to Elizabeth I during her visit.

Created by the internationally renowned duo Bompas and Parr (yes this is from the boys press release but they are), famed for their spectacular food installations (diito), the extraordinary banquet will be served alongside Kenilworth’s Elizabethan Garden. The Garden, which opened in May 2009, is a full-scale re-creation of that built by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester in 1575 as part of his extravagant preparations for Elizabeth’s visit. Based on extensive evidence, including a detailed eye-witness description and archaeological exacavation, the Kenilworth Garden is the most accurate re-creation of an Elizabethan great garden ever attempted.

Also for the first time online here is the 300 strong menu list!

Sugar Sculptures

Twenty intricately designed sugar sculptures including sugar bears, sugar obelisks
and sugar aviaries with coloured sugar birds, animated on wires

Sugar and Fruit Fountain based on the central fountain in The Elizabethan Garden

Nine varieties of Custard Tart

Rose* Lavender*
Violet* Rosemary*
Strawberry* Juniper*
Chamomile Citronella
and Wormwood* (hallucinogenic herb more commonly known for its use in Absinthe)

Four varieties of Leach
(a thick, jelly-like preserve set hard enough to slice for serving)

Heart Leach Gilded Spades Leach (uses 24 carat gold)
Diamonds Leach Clubs Leach

Eight ‘Candies’

Candied Orange Candied Lemons
Candied Angelica (herb) Candied Grapes
Candied Cherries Candied Aniseed

Artificial Walnuts – ‘Sugar on Sugar’ – sculpted sugar walnut shells
which open to reveal a delicious sugar kernel

Hand Panned Dragees – sugared almonds (we like to call them medieval M&M’s!)

Four ‘Tansies’
(custard-like pancake dish with rich cream and eggs, sometimes thickened with dry bread crumbs)

Lemon Tansy
Bay* Tansy
Apple Tansy – coloured green with spinach juice
Rose* Tansy – made with edible flower blossoms folded into the batter

Eight Jams

Milk and Rose* Apricot
Blackcurrant Gooseberry
Ginger Wild Strawberry*
Honeycomb Pear Jam

Pudding in Skins
(delicious desserts cooked in pig bladder skins)

Ambergris (whale vomit, one of the most coveted ingredients in the world) Pudding in Skins
Rice Pudding in Skins

Special Desserts

Gingerbread in Bear shapes and Bird shapes
(representing the Bear and Ragged Staff from the Warwickshire Coat of Arms)

Flummery in Rosewater* and Almond varieties
(an early form of jelly, uses ground almonds soaked in water to create a ‘milk’)

Marchpane Gems
(an Elizabethan favourite – very stiff almond paste or marzipan that is shaped and molded into edible table centerpieces)

Knotted Quince (Pome Fruit moulded into flat ribbons and tied into knots)
Stamped Bear Quince (shaped as the Bear from the Warwickshire Coat of Arms)

Posset in Sack and Lemon Flavours
(A popular Elizabethan dessert – half drink and half trifle)

Fruits

A selection of succulent and juicy fruits including apples, pears, oranges, strawberries* and cherries

To Drink

Hippocras (mulled wine sweetened with spices)

Alcoholic cordial

Elizabethan Cocktail

* flowers/fruits which can be found in The Elizabethan Garden at Kenilworth Castle

Pothole Gardens

Super cute pothole gardens from Pete Dungey – I spent last summer filling in holes in my road with jelly (as the local council were clowns) so I must try to dig some pictures out. I was ‘hoping’ for one deep enough for a trifle but alas it was never to be.

Cherry ball gags…

UPDATE: OMG I had forgotten about posting this ages ago – is there a more perfect accessory to the Cakehead photoshoot than a cherry ball gag. Hell no, this is amazing!!!

Have totally fallen for the SS10 collection from Piers Atkinson entitled Sex On The Brain – the ‘pearl’ splashed balaclava and veil are a particular unique touch, and OF COURSE the cherry ball gag (above) is particularly awesome!!!

Look 24 is really funny too – clearly channeling spunk-tivitis (come on we all know what I mean)!!! At this point might also be worth mentioning that Piers Atkinson also has a diffusion range at Topshop – but to be honest no way near as screwed up = no way near as good!

Tweedocaster

This is an awesome idea from Felt Mistress (who I am hopefully going to be working with very soon).

A friend asked her to make a tweed cover for a Stratocaster. They are in a bluegrass band and normally play a banjo but he also wanted to play his electric guitar occasionally… …feeling it  was a bit too rock ‘n’ roll he asked for it to be made a bit more “geography teacher” = one Tweedocaster.

The Owl and the LARGE Pussycat

I don’t need to say anything – just check out the lions indifference when this poor little chap fell from his nest:

Black Oil Firefox Plugin

LOVE these geeks so much! The team at JESS3 have created a Black Oil Firefox Plugin, which coats BP’s online presence with a thick heaping of black, goey gobb –  much how BP have coated our oceans and with oil.

We made this plugin turn any image tagged with BP to black and white, and then under the photo, it has oil drips. If you go to any official BP site, like their Twitter, it turns everything black and the text is a dark grey. Also, any text that says oil will have underline drips.

[Download the Plugin here]

Futureheads Live at Scala

Few videos of The Futureheads live at Scala – such a happy making night. To be honest the best way to spend election night, like ever.

King Kong on the loose

Universal has been hyping the upcoming ride, King Kong 360 3-D, by staging Kong’s footprints and destruction in real life locations around Los Angeles, including Dodger Stadium and the beach at the Santa Monica Pier (via Notcot).