"black" news and stories

Well, since we're getting all decked out tonight in taffeta dresses, shimmering tights, and sparkling sandals, it sure makes sense to dress up your cupcakes, too.

Okay, so maybe you won't be donning taffeta, and will, instead, be in cozying up in front of the fireplace in your sweats.

In either case, you won't be baking tonight. However, when you do go back into the kitchen, you just might want to use these gorgeous cupcakes wrappers from Traylor Papers. The cupcake wrappers feature a laser cut design around the edge that dress up your cupcakes, even if they don't have frosting (but we know you'd never go frost-less).

The wrappers are $8 for a set of 10.

David Blaine at From The Back Kitchen recently posted about his experiments trying to develop new menu items around plantains. Faced with nearly 50 pounds, I guess he had plenty of chances to explore. Blaine says he tried grilling and roasting plantains both with and without the skin. From the photos, it looks like most of the plantains were cooked when they were still quite starchy. Unlike bananas, plantains can and should still be eaten when their skins are completely black. My standby method is peeling them with a knife, slicing them on a bias into half- to quarter- inch thick slices and shallow frying them in either butter or vegetable oil. A good dose of kosher salt and cracked pepper finishes them off. A little hot sauce never hurt them either.

Gorenje is already one of the leading European appliance manufacturers, but they are aiming to become the most innovative, as well. The company is releasing two lines of Swarovski crystal-encrusted refrigerator/freezers. The first is known as "the Eye-Catcher" and features 7,000 hand-embedded crystals in a high-gloss, black background. Only 10 of this model will be produced. For the slightly less outrageously inclined, the alternative to the Eye-Catcher is Gorenje's commercial line crystal fridge, which only has 3,500 crystals in a black and silver refrigerator/freezer.

Getting past their very unique look, the 2-meter high fridges are controlled with a touch screen mounted on the door, allowing the user to control settings and the appliance temperature very easily. From the same screen, users can access a built-in radio, recipe book and a voice memo recorder/player. Both models will be available exclusively at Harrod's, in England, later this month.

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