296238 Mon Feb 23 09:05:43 -0800 2004 44 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1631132 Decided to do a last minute Fat Tuesday party and I wanted to focus on the dinner so I bought a king cake from the local supermarket. Couldn't help but get a chuckle out of the label on the box - "Warning the baby inside is non edible." OK it was more like a loud cackle - got some strange stares from the other shoppers. Anyone else find such disclaimers? Mon Feb 23 09:05:43 -0800 2004 0 Aimee 1 1631137 If you're *sure* that the baby was, indeed, nonedible, then this thread belongs on the "Not About Food" Board! (There used to be a footnote on the CH Home Page concerning appropriate board placement for nonedible babies; but it appears to have vanished.) ;-) Mon Feb 23 09:53:47 -0800 2004 1631132 0 Marty L. 1 1631145 The little bag of dessicant that's included in electronics boxes to keep moisture away is always labelled "DO NOT EAT". I can't quite get into the mindset of someone that would consume something that came in the box with their CD player. Mon Feb 23 10:39:20 -0800 2004 1631132 0 Barbarito 2 1631169 I think it's a generic dessicant pac that they probably use in food packages, too...At least, I'm trying to give'm the benefit of a doubt here...;) Mon Feb 23 12:08:15 -0800 2004 1631145 0 galleygirl 3 1631183 an acquaintance made food for me and the housemates once, rice maybe, and he put the dessicant in too. we were all eating this rice, trying to be gracious, because who wants to insult someone's first cooking attempt? but poor guy, he knew it was awful so he started to flip out. And one of the roommates was like, well, did you follow the directions? and he was like, well, i used the right amount of water, cooked it and added the little flavor packet. so we all look at each other like 'what flavor packet' and Jess says 'where's the flavor packet?' and the cook didn't know. boy did we dig through the garbage quickly. no one got sick. Mon Feb 23 13:04:48 -0800 2004 1631169 0 renee 4 1631188 OMIGOD!!!!! And that, chil'uns, is why they label those packets of dessicant! ;) OTOH, my grandmother always told the story of a friend, who had lost her mother young, and didn't have anyone to "teach her things"...She cooked a turkey with the organs, wrapped in paper, inside.... Mon Feb 23 13:35:22 -0800 2004 1631183 0 galleygirl 5 1631192 The dessicant is just silica gel, and while it won't hurt you in small amounts, it's really not recommended eating. My mother didn't know how to cook, either (her mother had been an invalid for some years). When she was in her late teens (this would be the mid-1940s) she was told to go home and start lunch by putting the chicken on to boil. She faithfully did as she was told. When everyone else came home, they wanted to know what that AWFUL smell was. My mother replied that she didn't smell anything, just the chicken cooking. Her older sister looked in the pot and said, "Did you clean this before you cooked it?" My mother replied, "Clean it? I rinsed it off." Note: For those who don't know, chickens in those days were often sold uneviscerated--the cook often did that job. Mon Feb 23 13:44:56 -0800 2004 1631188 0 Colleen 4 1631431 In Mrs. Bridge, a swell novel by Connell, there is a scene in which Mrs. Bridge, a naive Midwesterner (no offense--that's the character), eats a fortune cookie fortune and all. Hee! Wed Feb 25 16:44:29 -0800 2004 1631183 0 not evan connell 1 1631148 I can almost see that--perhaps someone not familiar with king cakes (or a little clueless) might think that the baby was made of hard sugar, like cake roses. Mon Feb 23 10:54:39 -0800 2004 1631132 0 Chorus Girl 2 1631149 OK, I'm clueless. What's a "king cake"? And what's the "baby" thing? Mon Feb 23 10:59:29 -0800 2004 1631148 0 Sharuf 3 1631152 The King Cake is a traditional dessert on Fat Tuesday dessert it symbolizes it is decorated with purple green and gold - purple represents justice, green faith and gold power. The baby symbolizes the baby Jesus. The person who get the slice with the baby supposedly will have good luck for the year(and has to buy the cake the next time) That is the story I have heard anyway... Mon Feb 23 11:10:59 -0800 2004 1631149 0 Aimee 4 1631176 In fact, one of my friends hid the baby when she got it--she was in college and didn't have the means or a place to throw a party herself! The parties begin after Epiphany (hence King Cake) and go through Mardi Gras. Mon Feb 23 12:23:36 -0800 2004 1631152 0 Wisco 3 1631154 A King Cake is a traditional dessert served during Mardi Gras. It's in the form of a ring and it's sprinkled with purple and yellow and other colored sugars on top. Baked inside is a tiny plastic baby, representing Christ, I think. Who ever gets the baby in their slice of cake is celebrated. Mon Feb 23 11:13:29 -0800 2004 1631149 0 Deenso 4 1631199 A girl down the hall from me in college had a huge glass jar filled with several hundred of those little babies. Creepy but funny! Every Mardi Gras I think of that. Mon Feb 23 15:25:41 -0800 2004 1631154 0 Zorra 2 1631153 Good point - except the plastic baby was taped to the outside of the box... It just struck me as funny - like instructions on how to wash your hair on a shampoo bottle and cooking magazines that print recipes for buttered galic bread. Mon Feb 23 11:12:41 -0800 2004 1631148 0 Aimee 3 1631161 Getting OT, but my favorite is the warning on the windshield shade (the thing that blocks the sun to keep a parked car from overheating): "Do not drive with auto shade in place." Mon Feb 23 11:32:27 -0800 2004 1631153 0 Buttercup 4 1631163 I keep thinking that if they posted that warning, it means that someone, somewhere, has done that. Mon Feb 23 11:37:32 -0800 2004 1631161 0 Colleen 5 1631164 Thinning the herd :-) Mon Feb 23 11:45:30 -0800 2004 1631163 0 Aimee 5 1631197 And has had something gone wrong & has threatened to sue. Mon Feb 23 15:12:56 -0800 2004 1631163 0 Chorus Girl 4 1631232 My personal favorite was a Hundai (?) Tiburon car commercial which showed a sports car coming up out of the water to menacingly circle a fishing boat . Apparently , tiburon roughly translates to shark in some language I am unfamilar with . ANYWAY ... the little disclaimer at the bottom of the screen said " Do not drive your car in the ocean . " I was like , well there goes my weekend plans . Mon Feb 23 21:59:50 -0800 2004 1631161 0 GoalieJeff 1 1631160 My corner laundromat has signs on the dryers warning me to check inside for small children or animals before use. Maybe W.C. Fields has been spotted in the neighborhood.... And of course, I always alert my wife when Macy's has a "Baby Sale". Mon Feb 23 11:27:39 -0800 2004 1631132 0 Gary Soup 2 1631206 I couldn't find my puppy one day. Searched the house for about 30 minutes before I found her curled up in the dryer on top of the warm clothes. I had opened the dryer door to shut-up the buzzer but had not removed the clothes. I swear, I got the cutest photo you've ever seen out of that incident, but I'm still horrified about what if I had decided to put a little more time on those clothes before I realized she was missing. Mon Feb 23 15:41:36 -0800 2004 1631160 0 danna 1 1631173 Not a disclaimer exactly...But several years ago Green Giant took the cooking directions off their canned corn (Pour contents in pan and heat through). But huge public outcry ensued and the directions are back. Mon Feb 23 12:18:57 -0800 2004 1631132 0 TrishUntrapped 1 1631178 At least the "Don't eat the baby" warning is not some new lawyers' atrocity; I lived in New Orleans more than 20 years ago and I remember seeing the same warnings then. I agree with Chorus Girl's comments about mistaking it for hard sugar, or candy. Given the Louisianian willingness to eat all sorts of good but surprising looking stuff, this warning might be well-placed. When my son was 10 weeks old we took him to the Acme Oyster Bar (Lakeshore) and plopped him up on the table in his little carrier-bucket, and it occurred to me that we should probably have a "Don't eat the baby" sign so no one would mistake him for a particularly delectable bit o' seafood. :-) Personally, I've always thought king cake pretty much tastes like coffee cake, and it was never one of my vices when I lived in NOLa. Always thought it was too bad they didn't use dobash cake--a New Orleans speciality that just doesn't taste the same anywhere else -- for this ritual instead. (We were visiting my in-laws there last weekend and dropped in at Gambino's; everyone else in the long line was buying the king cakes with various fillings, but me, I headed straight for the caramel and lemon dobash squares, and probably gained 5 lbs. overnight.) Or you could put the baby inside a big ol' muffuletta - - Mon Feb 23 12:40:33 -0800 2004 1631132 0 PayOrPlay 2 1631398 What makes a dobash cake a dobash cake? Where does the word dobash come from? That's what I want to know. Wed Feb 25 08:05:22 -0800 2004 1631178 0 BIll Hunt 3 1631403 If you're talking about a Dobos Torte, it is austrian, and named after it's creator, Josef Dobos. Wed Feb 25 09:27:14 -0800 2004 1631398 0 Fred B 4 1631414 The creator was actually Hungarian, not Austrian (Dobos is not a German name). Of course, at the time it was created, Austria-Hungary was one political entity. Link: http://foodandwine.netscape.com/invoke.cfm?objectID=EBEC1679-BE7C-11D6-82BC0002B3309983 Wed Feb 25 12:40:02 -0800 2004 1631403 0 Lori D 5 1631421 The Food and Wine recipe is excellent, by the way. I've tried a lot of Dobos Torte recipes and it's the best. Wed Feb 25 14:05:46 -0800 2004 1631414 0 Middydd 3 1631412 Here's the description from the epicurious.com food dictionary. A useful source. Link: http://eat.epicurious.com/dictionary/food/index.ssf?DEF_ID=1451 Wed Feb 25 11:50:48 -0800 2004 1631398 0 Liz K 3 1631427 I don't know the answer, but I have heard of at least 3 similar but different pastries: 1. Austrian/Hungarian/Swiss "dobos torte". (And there is a Romanian cake called dobosh that I've never had--it is the same?) 2. Hawaiian "dobash cake." 3. New Orleanian "doberge cake", pronounced "dobash." (Mea culpa for adding to the confusion by using the phonetic rather than the more formal spelling.) My understanding is that the Hawaiian and New Orleans versions are based on dobos torte but ended up quite different; I am only a humble eater, not a baker, and I really can't tell you why. I hope someone out there is more knowledgeable and can bring some light to this great mystery. Wed Feb 25 15:25:17 -0800 2004 1631398 0 PayOrPlay 4 1631428 Ahhh, and then there was the treat called "seven layer cake" that my Queens,NY used to buy me as a kid....A seven layer genoise, filled with buttercream like the Dobos, but topped with hard chocolate glaze....Never realized it was a bastardization of a gourmet classic til years later...The same grandmother introduced me to halvah by weight, as opposed to those pre-packaged sticks....May she rest in peace! Wed Feb 25 16:07:31 -0800 2004 1631427 0 galleygirl 3 1631474 Contrary to what PayorPlay says below, the "doberge" cake in New Orleans is commonly pronounced just like it is spelled. It consists of multiple layers of a sponge-type butter cake, with fillings between each and fondant frosting over all. The original was probably descended from dobos torte, and consisted of yellow cake with chocolate between the layers and chocolate icing. However, now bakeries in New Orleans sell other types including those with lemon or fruit flavored fillings. You can also get a half-and-half, popular in my office because some of us (me) like lemon and others insist on chocolate. Probably the most well known purveyor of doberge cakes in New Orleans is Gambino's. See web site link below. Link: http://www2.1stinflowers.com/cakes.html Thu Feb 26 09:12:01 -0800 2004 1631398 0 Sarah C 3 1631475 Contrary to what PayorPlay says below, the "doberge" cake in New Orleans is commonly pronounced just like it is spelled. It consists of multiple layers of a sponge-type butter cake, with fillings between each and fondant frosting over all. The original was probably descended from dobos torte, and consisted of yellow cake with chocolate between the layers and chocolate icing. However, now bakeries in New Orleans sell other types including those with lemon or fruit flavored fillings. You can also get a half-and-half, popular in my office because some of us (me) like lemon and others insist on chocolate. Probably the most well known purveyor of doberge cakes in New Orleans is Gambino's. See web site link below. Link: http://www2.1stinflowers.com/cakes.html Thu Feb 26 09:12:45 -0800 2004 1631398 0 Sarah C 4 1631483 So this is NOLA's answer to the NYC black-and-white? Image: http://www.cancansys.com/shop/images/DobergeHalf.jpg Thu Feb 26 10:27:20 -0800 2004 1631475 0 lintsao 4 1631498 Sarah C, just as a matter of linguistic interest, what part of New Orleans are you from, where people commonly pronounce it "do-burzh? I am not a New Orleanian (although I did live there for a while) but my wife is, and she, her parents and step-parents, her cousins and assorted friends and acquaintances (most of them from Uptown and "Metry" but ranging from River Ridge to Chalmette, Mid-City to Algiers), everyone I know from there calls it "do-bash." Just last week, I went to Gambino's and purchased some, and they all pronounced it that way (and they went and got some fresh ones out of the back because they thought the stuff in the case up front was too hard). Great stuff by any pronounce-iation. Thu Feb 26 13:06:31 -0800 2004 1631475 0 PayOrPlay 5 1631545 I grew up in the Uptown/Broadmoor area, and pronounce it "doh-bearzh". Definitely good stuff.... Thu Feb 26 20:45:00 -0800 2004 1631498 0 Catherine 5 1631608 As you know, pronounciations of many words and names vary throughout the city. I am not a native but I've lived here for six years, and in the law firm where I work in the CBD, my coworkers, most of whom are natives of this area, say "doberge." But that is not to say that it's not pronounced differently in another part of town. To illustrate the range of pronunciations that can occur here: There is a street named "Calliope." My husband says he has heard a radio announcer refer to "'Cal-lie-o-py' School on "Cal-lee-op" Street." Fri Feb 27 15:36:51 -0800 2004 1631498 0 Sarah C 5 1631614 As you know, pronounciations of many words and names vary throughout the city. I am not a native but I've lived here for six years, and in the law firm where I work in the CBD, my coworkers, most of whom are natives of this area, say "doberge." But that is not to say that it's not pronounced differently in another part of town. To illustrate the range of pronunciations that can occur here: There is a street named "Calliope." My husband says he has heard a radio announcer refer to "'Cal-lie-o-py' School on "Cal-lee-op" Street." Fri Feb 27 16:15:22 -0800 2004 1631498 0 Sarah C 6 1631815 I like the Greek pronunciation for that one (cuh lie o pay, accent on the second syllable) b/c the streets around Coliseum Square were named for the Greek muses. At one time the city fathers wanted to establish an institution of higher studies on the plot that is now the park at Coliseum Square, hence the names for the radiating streets. Correct me if any of this history is askew, please. I'm confident I have the basics right b/c I got this little tidbit it in a Louisiana Lit course. Tue Mar 02 11:00:02 -0800 2004 1631614 0 Beau 3 1631592 This answer is strictly subjective. My love of doberge was inspired by Gambino's version. I never thought the layers were sponge cake. They tasted to me more like good old yellow cake with vanilla custard between the layers with the chocolate glaze icing surrounding the whole thing. It is a culinary experience above any other store-bought cake unless you count New York cheesecake from Carnegie Deli. I always heard it pronounced "do bearj," the sound index of this being so close to "do bash" that you almost need Henry Higgins to analyze the difference. Fri Feb 27 13:08:30 -0800 2004 1631398 0 Beau Noppatee 2 1631594 Sadly the warning was necessary b/c there were cases of people choking on the darn little things. Now the king cakes are sold with the baby coming separately and you are in charge of inserting it and warning your guests. The cutest use of the king cake baby that I ever saw was at a costume party in which the winning team used the theme Test Tube Baby. A grown man in a diaper was wheeled in on a gurney. The gurney was surrounded by a wire cage covered in saran wrap for the appearance of a big test tube. The other parties were in surgical gowns and caps. They handed out or threw little test tubes with those king cake babies inside as their "favors." They took first place. My, my, how our discussions wax cerebral. Fri Feb 27 13:16:52 -0800 2004 1631178 0 Beau Noppatee 3 1631595 I think people are more likely to choke on those things because they don't see them - not because they think they are edible. And I have been eating King Cake in carnival season for more than 20 years and seem to remember a time when there was no warning label. Fri Feb 27 13:40:31 -0800 2004 1631594 0 beau 1 1631230 I would think that a cooked baby would , indeed , be perfectly edible . ;) Mon Feb 23 21:52:44 -0800 2004 1631132 0 GoalieJeff 2 1631243 Silly me - they must have meant not to eat it raw.... Tue Feb 24 08:02:00 -0800 2004 1631230 0 Aimee 1 1631254 I noticed that there is post today for "meatloaf safety"--got quite a chuckle out of that one. Tue Feb 24 09:29:46 -0800 2004 1631132 0 raj1