All Things Alt

It’s Friday and I’m feeling mighty cointreauversial- so I decided to treat my baby with tempting delicatessen inspired by my favourite glamorous beverage.

Hedonistic plan consists of three phases:

1. enticing his taste buds with the infamous Cointreau spiced cake,
2. entirely spoiling him with Cointreau mousses and finally,
3. indulging his (ok, mine too) passion for fine liquor with Cointreaupolitans

It may seem too much for one evening, but we are true experts when it comes to burning calories ;)

Just look at this mouthwatering chocolate bliss!

Here’s the recipe for it I acquired from miss Lucie Bernardova:

COINTREAU SPICED CAKE

(1 cup = 200 ml)

1.5 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
80 ml vegetable oil
250 ml milk
1 whole egg
2 tsp of unsweetened cocoa powder*
2 packs of chocolate custard powder
1 pack of baking powder ( cca 15 grams)
spices measured by eye - cinnamon, nutmeg and clove (if you want just plain chocolate tasting cake, skip this, or to accompany the Cointreau icing, add a grated orange zest from 1 orange)

* I actually used the überdelicous hot chocolate powder (chilli-flavoured)

Mix everything together and pour into a cake tin.
Bake at 180 C (fan oven) for approximately 50 minutes.
When cooled cut in the middle, spread red currant (or your favorite) jam or jelly and put back together.
Cover with this:

Cointreau icing 

250 g of icing sugar
100 g melted butter
3 tsp of unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tsp of Cointreau

Melt the butter, add sugar and mix until you have a smooth paste-like mass.
Add cocoa and Cointreau and mix well.
It may seem a bit ‘runny’ so wait a bit for it to cool and then spread onto your lovely cake.
This amount actually covers a much bigger cake, so end up licking the rest :-)

Despite being a huge fan of Chad Michael Ward, his latest collaboration with the current all-shock-no-substance flag-bearers of the industrial scene (no, not those German guys whose lyrical climax was a song about pussy) left a bitter taste of disappointment in my mouth. I expected a strikingly sexy, borderline disturbing visual nightmare with a fetishistic twist- oh how I hoped for a provocative eye candy that will haunt me in my wet dreams- still, it was nothing but wishful thinking.
Instead, I spent five precious minutes on watching badly (un)dressed subjugated crackwhores getting abused by a bunch of thugs who could easily be confused for delinquent emo minors if it weren’t for the abundant tattoos (oh wait) and big guns, a very much needed phallic notion given their wuss-like appearance. Sexploitation at its worst.

Since my interest in Combichrist itself is so weak I actually played the video on mute, I feel no need to discuss their work, though I did stumble upon an interesting discussion of the band’s controversy that stirred up quite a few comments on what the author called the brave new era of misogyny.

Remember when artists employed angst to deliver intelligent criticism on societal devolution? Apparently, nowadays, devolution penetrated the very core of our personalities and is considered cool. So what the fuck should I do with that bitter taste in my mouth? Angsty Andy suggests I should shut up and swallow, but I’ll rather spit it out and post some of CMW’s best artwork: