Terrific Cakes: Tremor’s Blood Orange and Anise Gougevoir
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Tremors
Where to start with Tremors?
If you’ve seen it, you know why it’s great.
If you haven’t seen it, there’s nothing I can say to you that will accurately capture it, but trust me when I say it’s lightning in a bottle.
You can’t know how easy and fun and light-hearted and well-made and tightly scripted this homage to B-horror this is. You can’t understand the depths of the genuine emotion you’ll feel for characters as they die mere minutes after you meet them. You can’t know just how charming Kevin Bacon, how attractive Fred Ward, and how genuinely funny Reba McIntire is.
Tremors is a near perfect movie. It has legitimate scares and intellegient fake-outs. It knows we know the cliches of horror and it uses that against us for comedic and horrific effect. At one point Tremors’ working title was Land Shark, but it’s so aware of itself that it really could be Land Scream.
Wait a second….
Land Scream?
I’ve loved Tremors for as far back as I remember. Like many of the movies in Terrific Cakes, I don’t remember a time in my life when Tremors wasn’t already part of it. I must have seen it when I was really young. It’s about as scary as Jurassic Park, so fine for the kind of six year old I was.
But it wasn’t until this viewing that I appreciated the intelligence of its production and script: primarily that the monster is a fake out of a fake out.
For those of us that have seen Tremors 20+ times… look at that poster up above. Go ahead. Keep looking. Do you see it?
I didn’t even realize until I saved this image to my desktop, despite having seen this image every time I went into our local video store: THAT’S NOT A GRABOID.
That’s not even a graboid’s tongue!
The explanation for this poster is actually just another case of terrible marketing departments not understanding the “why” of the film they’re promoting, but their lack of judgment actually taps into a meta narrative movies like Scream capitalized on.
When you look at this poster, it immediately calls to mind Jaws. How can it not to a horror fan (or really any movie fan)? There’s an almost dinosaur-like viciousness to the creature you’re seeing emerge from the depths with its mouth and fangs. This image primes you for a Land Shark experience.
So when Tremors starts and there’s almost a slapstick sensibility, you’re thrown off. There’s no skinny-dipping eviscerations that kick off this monster’s journey. We’re teased into the horror bit-by-bit by discoveries made along the way by two charming, bumbling leads.
By the time we actually see a monster, it looks nothing like the poster. It’s a small, slimy tentacle wrapped around the axle of a truck. It appears there’s no great white under the dirt, just some sort of writhing, sightless worm.
And then we see the two ton torpedo of grit and mucus that is a graboid.
The poster (unintentionally from the sounds of it) primes us for one experience, the movie lulls us into another, and when the reveal finally happens, it’s truly a shock. To the characters. To the audience.
The movie pretends to show its hand early. It’s like Scream putting Drew Barrymore right up front on that poster. Wes Craven knew most of his audience had seen the suite of “final girl” movies. Everyone went into Scream knowing that the most famous person would likely be the star, and therefore the survivor. So when the star got killed in the first five minutes? All bets were off. When Tremors showed us its sad little monster wrapped around an axle only to reveal that was just the tongue of its actual beast? It knocks you back on your heels just enough to go along with the ride the movie wants to take you on.
Gougevoir
Inspiration can come from lots of different places. Sometimes when I’m watching a movie, it just strikes.
That’s what happened here… but I’m going to need some therapy to help me understand why.
Something about that wet, oozing graboid tongue lolling out of the concrete bunker made me sit up and literally say out loud “That’s the cake!”
I was drawn to how dry and dusty the environment of Perfection, Nevada, is in Tremors, and totally captivated by that water balloon of a graboid exploding at the end. It’s like the graboids have taken all the moisture into their big, sluggy, gushy bodies. Every time a graboid opens its wet mouth, the contrast of its dry exterior and juicy innards stuck with me.
So I leaned into the weirdness of that and made a cake that oozed like you accidentally put your jackhammer into a graboid.
Who could capture the glory of Reba’s upper lip?
IT. ALL. WORKED. 10/10
I’ve made a cake that bled before, but it only had one BIG pocket of blood that cascaded out like its name was Glen. I’ve been thinking of making a cake with multiple pockets of blood, or slime, or gooj, for quite a while… and the slick sliminess of the graboids finally inspired me to do it.
It all worked
The Gougevoirs
My reservoirs of slime were actually very easy to do, if a little time consuming.
The first step was to fail to get a curd to set. Luckily, I lack some sort of inherent skill or knowledge about curds, so I basically just had to try and make a curd and watch it fail…
The second step was to pipe out dams of frosting on each individual cake layer. It was basically like making each cake layer into an orange slice.
I froze these dams of cake for about twenty minutes before filling them (18:22 on the video is the best way to see this, really) so the frosting wouldn’t depress when the cake was stacked.
I filled the dams, stacked the cake, frosted it, and covered the whole thing with crushed lady fingers. I sliced into it and couldn’t believe how well it worked. The cake oozed. If the slime had been red it would have been bleeding. If it had black it would have been Devitoing.
Most of all, I’m happy to say that over the next four days of eating this cake, each new slice continued to have a fresh pocket of slimy, oozey gooj. Sometimes the person having the cake slice would pop open a gougevoir that had been captured within the bounds of an individual slice. It was spectacular fun and seriously delicious.
Add too Much Spice
A lot of recipes will call for you to infuse spice or herbs into milk.
I’m here to tell you I don’t have the tastebuds for that kind of subtlety.
I don’t think I’ve ever infused an herb or spice into something and actually tasted it. I know some people can, but I’ve Helen Sharp’ed enough Duncan Hines in my life to burn away any nuance in my palette.
There’s also the matter of your infused flavor competing with the bulk of a cake’s ingredients: butter, flour, and sugar are incredibly potent flavors and no matter how long you steep some rosemary in simmered buttermilk, it’s just not coming through.
What I always finds works, is to double or triple the amount of spice or herbs you think you need and to crush or blend them directly into the dry or wet ingredients. For this cake, I took about eight star anise and crushed them into approximately three tablespoons of powder, which I put into my white cake recipe.
And, honestly, it was great. The cake tasted strongly of anise, and our house smelled like anise for a few days, but this strong flavor allowed the cake to stand up against the hyper sweet orange curd and the buttery frosting. So often white cakes are just the empty space between frosting and filling, but they can be a great compliment if you’re daring enough to blend what most people would call “an ethically questionable amount” of flavor into them.
Honestly… I probably learned this from Christina Tosi, whose lemon bundt has something like twelve lemons in it compared to most recipes’ two to three.
Video Vixen
It’s been awhile since my last post… about six weeks… and I hate to say it’s nothing more than good old-fashioned Andy overworking and not prioritizing his own personal mental health over the demands of a job.
Sigh.
My work in our community has really taken off this year, which has been good… but not sustainable… see Medicinal Cakes for more on that whole thing.
I recorded this video almost eight weeks ago and have made a ton of simpler cakes in the weeks following, but after my third fifty-hour work week (I’m a part-time employee, by-the-way) in a row, I knew it was time to reprioritize.
I don’t think, realistically, that I have enough time to do a video a week, especially as pride is only about three months away and there’s probably 400 hours of work between now and then, but I’ve got to reserve mornings for personal creative endeavors.
The irony is that I have an incredibly creative job where I spend all day designing and engaging in creative tasks… but there’s something different about doing something not for work. It hits your tongue differently when it’s just for the sake of doing it.
And for the sake of having cake to eat.
And for the sake of busting out of your Wrangler western wear on the YouTubes.
Recipes and Sources
As long as you have time to chill the layers when making this monster, it’s actually a pretty simple cake to execute!
I’d highly recommend trying your own Gougevoir! Just ask yourself: what color does it bleed when I plunge my knife into its side?
Red? Try watered-down raspberry jam.
Blue? Strained blueberry jam?
Black? Try tar!
GOUGEVOIR
If you’d like to recreate my exact Gougevoir, you’ll need to have Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz for her white cake recipe (although you could substitute any firm-crumbed white cake) and Zoë Bakes by Zoë Francois for her ermine frosting. I used Kim-Joy’s orange curd recipe from Baking with Kim-Joy for graboid blood. This recipe is more of a SUPER runny slime and less of a curd, which was great for this. I usually love Kim-Joy’s recipes but this one is recommended only for bleeding purposes.
The only other ingredient you’ll need is Lady Fingers or another crushable cookie. You’re going for dry here.
Make your white cake.
I crushed approximately 3 TBSP of star anise and added it to the dry ingredients of my white cake. This was for two 8” round cakes. Scale up or down depending on what size you’re looking to do.
Because I wanted a lot of pockets of filling, I used a recipe that called for 3 8” cakes and just used 2 8” pans. I used baking strips on the outside of the pans since I knew that overfilling these pans would mean the centers would take significantly longer to bake. Baking strips (wet cloth tied around your pans) help the outside cook more in line with the center for large or deep cakes. I did all of this so that each cake layer would be about 2.5” tall, making it easy to slice them in half, giving me a four-layer cake.
Make your gooj.
I happen to be terrible at curd, so I could really pick any recipe, leave out the cornstarch, and I’d have sweet, colorful slime. If you have the ability to make curd (so you think you’re better than me?), simply take it off the heat well before it leaves a trail on the bottom of the pan or double boiler. You want to remove the curd somewhere after “juice” but well before its set. Err on the side of too wet, as the frosting dams are very adept at holding back the liquid.
If you don’t want to make gooj, try watering down a jam until it gets to a slimy, unholy consistency.
Make your frosting.
I chose ermine frosting, but you could make any buttercream. It’s important you use a buttercream because you need the waterproof traits of the fat and oil to hold back your liquid. If you do something like a whipped cream or meringue, it will absolutely melt from your gooj. Think of your frosting as the concrete dividers in your Tommy Lee Jones’ Los Angeles (5:13).
Ermine is a good choice because it has a very subtle flavor, and likely your gooj is going to be VERY sweet since it’s a curd or jam.
Level and divide your cakes.
Put a thin layer of frosting on each cake. Think of this as sealing the cake’s crumb against the deluge of gooj. Any gaps will cause your gooj to simply soak into the cake layers, robbing your guests of their gorey surprise.
Pipe segments onto your cake’s interior layers. It should look like an orange slice of frosting dams. Do all of the layers at the same time.
Take a small palette knife or offset spatula and seal any seams. Make sure that you aren’t accidentally creating any channels or ramps for liquid to escape, though. Keep your dams as deep as possible without actually exposing any cake for the liquid to drain into.
Chill these cake layers with their frosting dams for at least twenty minutes. The frosting should be firm enough to not depress at all when the cake is stacked, or the liquid could prematurely squirt out.
Fill frosting dams with gooj.
Stack cake layers.
You may need to press lightly on the layers to help level them as the chilled frosting won’t have much give.
If any gooj escapes, wipe it up with a paper towel. Don’t attempt to patch any dams as the wet frosting really won’t do much. If there’s a catastrophic leak, stop filling, patch the dam, rechill, and try again.
Frost the outside of the cake gently.
Because we chilled our layers, the frosting should be holding up the cake enough to prevent the act of frosting it from squeezing out all of our precious gooj.
Once the cake is fully covered, the frosting acts as another support to keep the gooj from squeezing out when you slice the cake.
Crush lady fingers, being careful of your lady fingers.
Apply crushed lady fingers to the outside.
Add the eye.
Giggle.
Cackle.
Slice.
Maniacally laugh and shriek “It worked! It worked! After all these years I’ve finally done it! You’ll all regret laughing me out of the academy! YOU FOOLS! YOU-U-U FOOLS!”
Eat.
Leave no witnesses.
Fall asleep with a full belly and dreams of what other visceral confections await you on this path you’ve chosen.
Thanks for your eyes! Follow and share on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube! I put out a video and post every few weeks, and subscribing is the best way to make sure you don’t miss any of the absurdity.
Join me in a few weeks for my tenth Terrific Cake and what may be the single most influential horror “movie” that made me this slip of a girly boy barely standing before you today… It… the 1990 miniseries.
I think about this movie almost daily.
Literally.
Most days I am struck by a thought, an image, a false memory of this.
This miniseries holds a special place for early-80’s babies. Most of us saw it when it came out or shortly thereafter.
And we were all changed because of it.
