Gingerbread Train

Cool Christmas themed gingerbread train, created in three days.

Gingerbread Laptop

Creative gingerbread laptop, complete with gingerbread mouse.

Modern Gingerbread House

Completely edible gingerbread house, including the rock garden.

Gingerbread Star Wars TIE Fighter

Cool gingerbread Tie fighter made by Flickr user firqoret.

Gingerbread Empire State Building

Donkey Kong Santa made from Marzipan sits on the building as little marshmallow planes circle above.

Left 4 Dead 2 Gingerbread Zombies

Gingerbread characters inspired by Left 4 Dead 2 video game.

Gingerbread Link

Unique gingerbread creation inspired by the main protagonist in Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda series of video games.

Gingerbread Star Wars AT-AT Walker

All-Terrain Armored Transport, the Imperial combat vehicle seen in Star Wars, made from gingerbread.

Gingerbread Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower created, in all its majesty, out of gingerbread.

Gingerbread Mac

Old school gingerbread Apple computer made by Flickr user MinorBug, chocolate was used for icons/ports/cursor.

Sushi USB Flash Drives

Do you like Sushi? Then you will love these Sushi USB flash drives.

Sushi Stapler

Sushi mini staplers are available in tuna, salmon and shrimp.

Sushi Soap

So authentic looking… and while you can’t eat this sushi, it will definitely keep you clean.

Sushi Costumes

Made of upholstery foam – costume body, rice and sushi contents.

Sushi Ring

Creative jewelry by Carolyn Tille features realistic pieces of sushi.

Sushi Clock

Battery operated, each piece is handmade and arranged in an actual sushi tray.

Sushi Slippers

Handmade sushi slippers make a cool gift for anyone who loves sushi.

Sushi Cupcakes

Fondant covered cupcakes with gumpaste “wasabi” and “ginger”.

Sushi Candles

This Sushi inspired set of candles comes with four pieces of sushi plus a side of wasabi and pickled ginger.

Sushi Ornaments

Every piece of each sushi is fully three-dimensional and individually hand sculpted and painted by Morgan Crone.

Sushi Spare Wheel

Clever advertisement for Yuzu Sushi by Lg2, Quebec, Canada.

Sushi Pillows

Cool stylish pillows that look like giant pieces of sushi.

This is how I made it:

Since August I’ve had a post it note over my desk that simply said “meat hand”. I mulled over how to make it for a while. I realized that the old formed inside a plastic glove thing wouldn’t work since the fingers would cook so much faster than the rest of the hand. It wasn’t until I saw this hand gelatin mold that I had my plan:

I shot several angles to show how it has a base built in, meaning I could probably use it to mold meatloaf.

I made the basic meatloaf recipe from How to Cook Everything using a food processor to chop the onions and carrot to a very fine mince so I could fill in the details of the mold without trouble. One meatloaf recipe using 2 pounds of meat will make two hands.

I sprayed the inside of the mold with cooking oil spray and it came out fairly easily. I put it on top of a rack to allow the fat to run off as it cooked.

I did a few versions, learning as I went along.

Version #1

The first one was straight meatloaf. I surrounded it with mashed potatoes and kale (or brain matter and swamp greens if you have kids, or just act like kids). It looked ok, sort of creepy:

Version #2

The next time I tried adding fingernails made of onion, which were just like press on nails:

To make the fingernails I sliced a thin round off of a single layer of an onion, then used kitchen scissors to trim it into a nail shape keeping the lines in the onion running the length of the nail. I kept the thinnest end of the onion slice at the tip of the nail. (Shown here using a red onion as it’s easier to see details.)

I also covered it with ketchup before cooking:

It turned out gross:

This time to better define the fingers I piped mashed potatoes around the hand to define the shape. I just used a ziploc bag with a small corner snipped off to do the detail inbetween fingers, then I snipped off a larger corner to pipe around the hand. I smoothed down the mashed potatoes with a silicone spatula. The results where pretty creepy.

Version #3

The ketchup covered hand made me pretty happy but… I had this idea. My mom used to throw a slice of cheese on top of her meatloaf before cooking it and the cheese always turned out browned and crispy. I wondered how that would work with my relatively delicate hand. I also had the idea to use the smaller inner layers of the onion to create a cartoon-y wrist bone sticking out.

Continue…

• Four slices of whole wheat bread
• Turkey & mayonnaise (or ham, or peanut butter, whatever you want!)
• American cheese singles
• Blueberry

See the instruction:

1. Take the crust off the bread (all four of them) carefully. Do not throw away the crust! You’ll need them later. Also don’t cut the crust with a knife, you need the corner piece of the crust.

2. Cut bread into a square.

3. Spread mayo on bread, put a slice of turkey on top, and put bread on the top. This will be Wall-E’s body.

4. Cut two slice of bread into four triangles. You’ll have total of 8 mini-triangles. 4 triangles will be Wall-E’s treads, and 4 triangles will be Wall-E’s eyes.

5. Make two turkey sandwiches out of four of eight triangles.

6. Wrap the crust corner around the triangle piece.

7. Cut the two sharp points of the four triangles with a spoon. These will be the eyes.

8. Make two turkey sandwiches out of #7.

9. Put a piece of crust for the neck, and place his eyes and treads by his body.

10. For his arms, cut crust 1-inch long X 2. Cut cheese into the same size as the crust, and cut it for the stripes.

11. Cut crust to make his hands.

12. Put his hands on the body, and cut a blueberry in half and put it on its eyes.

A very, very intrepid band of Sydney chefs turned up to make a few “real food” flags. I’m not sure whether the prize goes to Peter Kuruvita for his Sri Lankan flag, made of coconut ice dyed yellow, red and green (and thanks to the entire Kuruvita clan for their assistance there – a great pastime for a rainy Sunday afternoon) or Martin Boetz and the Longrain team. Finding blue food is never easy. Getting to the Fish Market early enough to find a row of perfect blue swimmers, to go with those coconut halves and gorgeous red chillies (the Thai flag, folks) is probably above and beyond the call of duty but we loved it!

These Foof Flags for the Sydney International Food Festival are stunning.