Giving someone a mixed tape may seem like a thing of the past, but giving a mixed CD is not. It can be just as personal, thoughtful, and keepsake worthy. Not to mention creative and cheap!
Above are some homemade designs Ellen Lupton (DIY—Design It Yourself) could be proud of. Top left was made from a magazine cutout, folded and taped; top right from found paper, cut and folded; bottom left from a computer printout; and bottom right is made with fabric sewn over paper in a regular plastic case.
Perfectionists in a hurry may prefer Chronicle’s CD kits, but they too allow you to personalize and remain creative beyond masterminding the perfect mix. The kits—like Petals in Pink above—by NYC-based Austrian illustrator Anja Kroencke, come with five CD label designs, two sleeve designs, and two sticker sheet designs so you can mix and match and adorn them for gifting or mailing.
If the aesthetic of Petals in Pink is too feminine for you, we have five more designs to choose from, including the newly released Candy Orchards, illustrated by our in-house designer Ayako Akazawa; and Vintage Vinyl, illustrated by Jason Munn of Small Stakes (above).
Now, we’re not saying that the designs of our CD kits have the power to bring back an ex-girlfriend, but the right mix just might. Present it right, and she could fall in love with you all over again.
Honey-Ginger Apple Croustades with Cinnamon-Sugar Walnuts
Makes six 3 1/2-inch croustades
Croustade is just another way to say “rustic tart,” but it sounds good, doesn’t it? These individual croustades look so sweet on a dessert plate. And because they’re rustic, there’s no need to worry about shaping the pastry-just fold up a little border and you’re done. I take these a step beyond a simple fruit tart by sprinkling them with crunchy glazed spiced walnuts, but they’re perfectly lovely unadorned, too.
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus about 2 tablespoons melted butter for glazing
1 1/4 pounds apples (about 5 medium, I like Braeburns and Fujis), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch chunks to make about 5 cups
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of kosher salt
1 sheet (about 9 ounces) frozen puff pastry, thawed
Cinnamon-Sugar Walnuts (recipe follows)
Heat the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat until sizzling, then add the apples and toss to coat. Sauté until a lot of the moisture has steamed off and the apples start to soften and brown, 8 to 10 minutes.
Add the honey, ginger, cinnamon, and salt and toss to blend. Taste and add more of any of these flavorings if you like. Set aside to cool.
On a lightly floured counter, roll the pastry into a 10-by-15-inch rectangle. Cut into six 5-by-5-inch squares, then trim off the corners of each square to make a rough round.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Arrange the pastry rounds on a baking sheet and prick each one at 1/2-inch intervals. Portion the apple filling evenly among the pastry rounds, leaving about a 1/2-inch border of pastry. Wet the border with a little water and loosely pleat it to create an edge that embraces the apples; the pastry won’t cover the center of the apple filling. Brush the edge with some of the melted butter.
Bake the croustades until the pastry is pale gold and set, about 18 minutes; brush a little more butter onto the pastry and continue baking until the pastry is puffed and a rich golden brown on the border and undersides (lift one to check), another 5 to 7 minutes.
Slide the croustades onto a cooling rack. Sprinkle each one with a heaping tablespoon of Cinnamon-Sugar Walnuts and let cool for at least 15 minutes or up to 1 hour before serving.
Do ahead
To make these ahead, fill and shape the croustades, freeze them unwrapped until firm, then wrap well in plastic and freeze until ready to bake. Bake directly from the freezer and add a few minutes to the cooking time.
Cinnamon-Sugar Walnuts
Makes about 1/2 cup
These nuts are tasty for munching as well as for garnishing the croustades. Be careful when you’re stirring because the sugar gets very hot.
1/2 cup walnut halves
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Line a plate with foil. Put the walnuts, sugar, and salt in a small skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the sugar starts to melt but is not yet syrupy and the walnuts start to smell toasty. Don’t let the sugar caramelize. Pour the nuts onto the plate, sprinkle with the cinnamon and let cool completely.
Put the nuts in a heavy plastic bag and crush them with something heavy. You want small pieces with a little bit of powder. Taste and add more salt or cinnamon to taste.
When Chronicle’s Design Desk started blogging this March we felt a little nervous about putting into words the visual world we see and love. Luckily there are plenty of things we’re eager to share.
Our best critics are our readers, so we looked to them to decide what was most popular. We got the heaviest traffic on our We Heart Anthropologie post. Perhaps you like their crafty creative spirit and vintage pretty aesthetic as much as we do.
The best offline, non-digital post we saw all year was Jake Gardner’s “Here’s Your Yellow Print Outs…” (above). A reminder to not be wasteful.
The designers posting for the Design Desk may not be natural writers, er… I mean bloggers, but we probably like some of the same things you do, if you like Chronicle publishing… so we hope we haven’t sounded like square-glasses, hipster sneaker dweebs.
All the best in the New Year (and more design nerdy-dom to come every Monday)!
The sweet Muscat and acidic berry notes are lovely with the delicate, floral crème de violette. This recipe is adapted from Lucius Beebe’s 1946 classic, The Stork Club Bar Book. It was served at the Stork Club in New York. The original recipe called for Champagne.
2 whole cloves
3/4 ounce crème de violette
5 ounces Moscato d’Asti, chilled (alternatives: Asti, Prosecco extra dry, Champagne extra dry)
Lemon twist for garnish
Place cloves in a chilled 6-ounce sparkling-wine glass. Add crème de violette. Top slowly with chilled bubbly. Stir gently. Garnish with short strip of lemon peel, first twisting it over the glass to release the flavorful oils into the drink.
Thanks to that one iconic picture of Johnny Cash flippin’ the bird, the one-finger salute is the de facto gesture when it comes to rock musicians proving authenticity and attitude. Makes sense: Cash believably claimed to wear black for the “poor and beaten down,” so it follows that his hand gestures embodied his contempt for authority and good behavior. Or had something to do with the way his addiction to pills modulated his personality. Whatever the case, it takes a little more of a leap of faith to imagine the dudes from Ratt or Warrant — responsible for “Round and Round,” and “Cherry Pie,” respectively — have a problem with authority beyond the fact that it sometimes gets in the way of partying.
Neil Zlozower’s new pocket-sized photo book, Fück Yöu follows in the footsteps of his previous photo book for Chronicle, Van Halen: A Visual History 1978-1984. Compiling every photo Neil has taken with his model(s) giving the camera the finger, it comes packed with an unhealthy dose of L.A. hair-metal glitz and glam and all the pomp attitude that scene embodied. Some of the people featured in the book’s pages are ubiquitous (Tommy Lee and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith) and some are comparative unknowns (Lääz Rockit? Big Cock? Trixter?); some look like they’d legitimately kick your ass (Lemmy, Tom Araya), and others are so cuddly the finger feels like a hug (Van Halen’s Mike Anthony is incapable of telegraphing danger, Chick Corea is wearing a keytar, for Christ’s sake).
Whatever the case, the rock star moodiness documented by the book has a funny way of translating into real life — it’s not hard to find footage of rockers devoting serious attention to putting audiences in their place. The videos below aren’t anywhere close to an exhaustive list of stupid band/audience interactions (a recent post on the Limewire blog comes closer), but they’re illustrative examples of those times when self-aware rock star moves are awkwardly forced to become more than just poses.
“Danzig getting knocked out”
All in all, does it really matter what this dispute was about? Certainly, Danzig getting dropped with a single punch is the punch-line (no pun intended) to this brief clip, but the pre-fight moments are just as interesting. It’s almost like a nature documentary. Cue David Attenborough voice: “Threatened, the 5’4” Glenn Danzig broadens his body and plants his feet to appear larger and surer in his Prince-sized frame than he would in casual interaction. He attempts to gain control over the confrontation by initiating physical aggression, but soon becomes victim of his own haste. Those that have gathered to watch turn their attention to the victor.”
“Henry Rollins beats up a fan”
It didn’t take long for hardcore punk’s reputation for violent shows to attract all manner of unstable folks looking for a forum to pour their pent-up aggression on kids in the pit. Which isn’t to say that this type of person wasn’t hardcore’s audience in the first place. LA — and, for that matter, punk or what remains of it — still hasn’t escaped from Black Flag’s long shadow. This clip from their early years illustrates the kind of punishment Henry Rollins was only too ready to dole out to shit-talking “fans.” More nuanced than simply stupid — and it’s viscerally frightening the way we observe Rollins’ sinewy body gleefully building up the rain of punches to come — this is the sort of universal “fuck you” gesture that hair-metal bands adopted in spirit, but were too career-minded to back up with real violence. Proof that the roots of the ‘tude were always already self-conscious, and not a little scripted. It didn’t take long for Flag to slow down the tempos, grow out their hair, and settle in for a long metal grind that was basically impossible to mosh to, but great for smoking weed and chilling out. Bummer?
“QOTSA’a Josh Homme gets mad at fan at concert.”
I go from sympathizing with Josh Homme in the first sentence of his incredibly involved, venomous rant — where he asks the audience to not throw shit at him when he’s sick, goddamnit — to hating him with the same amount of scorn that he lavishes on the sixteen-year-old-looking kid he singles out here. What’s truly amazing, though, is how each un-PC wordbomb he deploys to humiliate his “assailant” shows Homme growing further and further into a grotesque caricature of himself. Potentially ironic machismo lapses into real machismo, here, and the results are petulant insecurity and long-winded go-nowhereness. How gross.
“Jay Reatard - My Shadow w/Ass Kicking in Toronto”
This feels, to me, like the least dumb of all the videos. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that naming yourself “Reatard” is a gesture that goes a long way in proving your lack of pretension. It could also be that Reatard is in the middle of a musical winning streak that puts Rollins’ and Danzig’s (not to mention Homme’s) recent output to shame. So while you have to be patient for this one, it’s all good: you get to hear one of Mr. Reatard’s pop-punk gems before seeing him tear the shirt of a guy’s back. This seems legitimately retaliatory considering the fact that the guy unplugged Reatard’s guitar, but then again it’s common knowledge that this prolific, Memphis-based musician isn’t exactly a pacifist.
“Nickelback get’s hit with ROCKS!”
This one is satisfying for obvious reasons — Nickelback makes Candlebox look like the Jesus Lizard. It also pinpoints exactly what this Canadian group of post-grunge meatheads inherited from hair metal: a fussy temper and fussier hair. The hissy fit documented in this clip shows the band’s frontman, Chad Kroeger, delivering a passive-aggressive tirade against the rock-throwing segment of the band’s audience at a Portuguese festival. While wanting to walk off the stage when people are trying to beam you with rocks makes obvious sense, Kroeger’s peevish tone has the same pampered quality the band derided in their song “Rockstar.” It also calls to mind the video of a ’94 Jesus Lizard performance where David Yow takes a glass flask to the jaw — it appears to break on impact with his head — and then gets back up and finishes the song. So, um, Mr. Kroeger, what were you saying about rock ‘n’ roll?
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