Jdanehey

[Photographs and original illustrations: Cakespy]

The Cadbury Creme Scotch Egg is coated with a thick cocoa-kissed batter, then coated in cookie crumbs and deep-fried. When eaten warm, the taste calls to mind that of a deep-fried candy bars that one can find at state fairs, but in my opinion, a slightly more complex flavor. It's the perfect dessert counterpart to the classic Scotch Egg: similar visually, and every bit as decadent. Happy Easter indeed.

About the author: Jessie Oleson is a writer, illustrator, gallery owner, and cake anthropologist who runs Cakespy, an award-winning dessert website. Her first book came out in October 2011; her second book comes out in May.

Every recipe we publish is tested, tasted, and Serious Eats-approved by our staff. Never miss a recipe again by following @SeriousRecipes on Twitter!

Special equipment: Large pot, for frying; slotted spoon

Ingredients

serves makes 4 eggs, active time 20 minutes, total time 2 hours, 20 minutes

• 4 Cadbury Creme Eggs
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup flour
• 8-12 cups of vegetable or peanut oil, quantity depending on your pan
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups vanilla wafers, crushed (I used Teddy Grahams)

Procedures

1. Start out by unwrapping your Cadbury Creme Eggs. Freeze them for at least 2 hours, or even overnight—you want them to be like little rocks.

2. Near the end of the chilling period, get yourself set up. Have three shallow bowls handy: one with 1/2 cup of the flour, one with the beaten egg, and one containing the crushed vanilla wafers. Also get out a larger bowl, for mixing your batter.

3. Now, it's time to start heating the oil for frying. I poured about 6 cups of vegetable oil into a medium saucepan, so that it was about 4-5 inches deep. The exact quantity of oil required will depend on the size of your saucepan. Turn the heat to medium-high, and insert a candy or frying thermometer. The oil needs to reach 375°F on the thermometer, which will take about 10-12 minutes.

4. While the oil heats, prepare the batter. Place 1/2 cup of flour in a shallow bowl and set aside for the moment. Place 3/4 cup of flour in a small bowl and stir in the cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. In a mixing cup, stir together the milk, vinegar, and oil. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry until smooth and free of most lumps. The batter should be thicker than a pancake batter—if it seems too liquidy (as if it might drip off when you dip the Cadbury Creme Eggs in it), whisk in the remaining flour until it has reached the desired consistency.

5. Remove the Cadbury Creme Eggs from your freezer. I found that it is best to fry one cupcake at a time, so you could take them out of the freezer a couple at a time so that the eggs fried later on don't get too warm while sitting out.

6. Using a spoon, coat an egg with the batter mixture. Use floured hands to mold the batter around the egg so that every bit is covered.

7. First, dredge the battered Creme Egg in the flour, covering it completely. Tap off excess.

8. Now, coat the floured ball with the egg wash.

9. Roll the egg wash coated ball in the cookie crumbs, coating on all sides.

10. Using a slotted spoon, gently ease the crumb-coated orb into the hot oil. Once the batter has reached a pleasing golden hue (a minute or less), remove the Cadbury Creme Scotch Egg from the oil and transfer to a plate covered with paper towel to soak up the excess grease.

11. Repeat the battering and frying process with the remaining Cadbury Creme Eggs, battering and coating them one at a time directly before dipping in the frying oil. While frying, be sure to monitor the temperature of the oil and adjust your heat up or down accordingly so that it remains at 375°F. If the oil is too cold it won't fry quickly enough and the chocolate eggs will soak up too much grease; if it is too hot, the outside will get dark before the inside is fully warmed, leaving you with a delicious shell but a still gooey batter on the inside.

12. Eat while still warm.

Mountain Fiji, Colonel Ninotchka, Debbie Debutante, Susie Spirit, Spike, Chainsaw and their colleages were underestimated from the start. They were the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (or G.L.O.W.) and for four years that started in 1986 they were a day-glo staple of Saturday morning programming. No one expected them to catch on ("It was almost an infomercial!" recalls one of the wrestlers on the show's rampant product placement) or last as long as they did, but then when it was clear that they had (after 104 episodes), the show's primary backer Meshulam Riklis stopped funding it supposedly because his then-wife, camp icon Pia Zadora, forced him to.

Real life is almost as absurd at what played out on the small screen, which is described by one of its participants as "a vaudevillian show mixed with Saturday Night Live mixed with female wrestling." It's all lovingly documented in Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason's G.L.O.W.: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, which airs tonight on Logo. Several of the original Ladies participated in the documentary, which gives it voyeuristic before-and-after appeal (what does a female professional wrestler of the '80s look like almost 30 years later?). But the doc also exudes a humanity that the conscious camp of the show glossed over.

Though it came off as little more than sensory junk food, G.L.O.W. mattered to so many of the women involved — many were cast based on their appearance over their athletic prowess and hoped to use G.L.O.W. as an entry into high-profile show business. For most of them, G.L.O.W. would prove to be the height of their careers in entertainment, and now they're looking back on their legacy. It's easy to see parallels to the used-and-discarded participants of reality TV, which has to some audiences replaced professional wrestling as the low-culture performance art of its time. The Ladies performed at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas and were housed in basically a giant dorm nearby. They worked as they lived, to a sometimes detrimental extent. In the film, Lori Palmer (Colonel Ninotchka) explains, "We were constantly in character. I became Ninotchka because I was Ninotchka 24/7." A man fell in love with that character, proposed to her and then left her when he realized Lori couldn't live up to the brutal strength of her character.

G.L.O.W. was a blip on the pop culture radar that meant a lot to a few people who carry it with them today (in sustained injuries and fond recollections, alike). It's particularly interesting to watch co-founder Matt Cimber specifically refer to the show as "camp" on old Donahue footage — that sort of self-awareness is usually only found in retrospect. It accordingly abounds elsewhere in G.L.O.W.: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, which manages to be heartfelt about a ridiculous subject. Also in that Donahue clip, Cimber describes G.L.O.W. as "a great image for young girls...They show women as independents." It sounds like spin, especially from its male guiding hand. Indeed, by the end of the doc, what emerges as most important is shared experience.

Where Are They Now? is kind of like OWN's version of a TLC freak show except the freaks who detail their lives in inevitably fascinating babble are people whose notoriety Oprah Winfrey helped facilitate. (Never forget that OWN is owned by O.) Or at least, they are people formerly of note. Such was the case on last night's episode featuring Gennifer Flowers, the woman who claimed to have an affair with Bill Clinton during his first run for office in 1992. She claims that Star magazine came to her with knowledge of her involvement, which caused her to announce it to the public.

More importantly, the woman, now at age 63, is ripening into a proper eccentric who says things like, "I thought I was doing us both a favor by going to talk with [Clinton's] people and taking my lawyer and, you know, threatening a lawsuit." Uh, ok. In the clip above, she discusses her post-scandal career as a lounge singer and speaker who reaches women with her stories of "surviving and thriving." Sometimes women ask her for advice on being with married men. Her advice is, "Say no! And go! And tell!" Oh wait, no. That's Webster's advice.

Flowers' appearance has been altered considerably (such compare and contrast is more than half of the point of Where Are They Now?), but her spirit continues to flourish, or something.

BURNING THE GROUND EXCLUSIVE 1987

Re-Rip Remaster

Originally I posted this one on January 12, 2011. But for those who may have missed it or if you are a new reader just discovering BTG. I decided to give this one a new rip with my newer Ortofon 30 stylus. This 12″ is also being posted in 24 bit flac for the very first time!

BACKGROUND:

“It’s a Sin” is a song recorded by Pet Shop Boys which reached number one on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in 1987.

Written by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant, “It’s a Sin” was the lead single from the duo’s second “proper” album, Actually. Released in June 1987, it became the duo’s second UK number one single. It was also a massive hit across Europe, supposedly the best-selling European single of 1987. In the United States it reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming the duo’s third Top 10 hit there. A demo of the track was first cut in 1984 with Bobby O, and the song’s form in the demo remained intact to the final version, although the released production is far more dramatic.

The song is a description of Tennant’s Catholic upbringing and education at St Cuthbert’s High School in Newcastle upon Tyne. The song uses extensive samples from Latin masses (specifically, Tennant reciting a part of the Confiteor, and other sounds recorded at locations such as Westminster Cathedral) and religious imagery throughout to reinforce the feel of the song. Tennant has said that he wrote the lyrics in 15 minutes, purging his emotions in a moment of frustration and anger.

The Latin passage near the end translates as, “I confess to almighty God, and to you my brothers, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, act, and omission, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”.

The dramatic, overblown production style of the song, loaded with synthesizers, orchestra hits and bookended by a non sequitur sample of a NASA countdown, has come to exemplify the most theatrical extremes of the Pet Shop Boys’ musical style. To date, it remains a concert staple, being one of only two songs (alongside “West End Girls”) that has been played during every Pet Shop Boys tour

CONTROVERSY:

At the time of the single’s release, British DJ Jonathan King accused Pet Shop Boys of plagiarising the melody for “It’s a Sin” from Cat Stevens’ 1971 hit, “Wild World”. He made the claims in The Sun newspaper, for which he wrote a regular column during the 1980s. King also released his own cover version of “Wild World” as a single, using a similar musical arrangement to “It’s a Sin”, in an effort to demonstrate his claims. This single flopped, while Pet Shop Boys sued King, eventually winning out-of-court damages, which they donated to charity.

SIDE A:
It’s A Sin (Phil Harding Latin Vocal Mix) 9:14
Keyboards [Fairlight] - Andy Richards
Remix – Pet Shop Boys , Phil Harding

It’s A Sin (Phil Harding Latin Dub Mix) 4:20
Keyboards [Fairlight] - Andy Richards
Remix – Pet Shop Boys , Phil Harding

SIDE B:
It’s A Sin (Remix)  8:18
Remix – Ian Ian Levine

It’s A Sin (Disco Mix)  7:39
Mixed By [Additional] - Stephen Hague

You Know Where You Went Wrong  5:49
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Shep Pettibone

VINYL GRADE:
Vinyl: Near Mint
Cover: Near Mint

CHARTS:

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1987	It’s A Sin	U.S. Billboard Hot 100	#9
1987	It’s A Sin	U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play	#3

 

RELEASE INFORMATION:
Label: EMI America - V-19256
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 33 RPM
Country: US
Released: 1987
Genre: Electronic
Style: Latin, Synth-pop
Credits: Mastered By – Herbie Jr. :^)*
Producer [Additional] – Stephen Hague (tracks: A1, A2, B2)
Producer, Engineer – Julian Mendelsohn (tracks: A1 to B2)
Written-By – Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe*

NOTES:
Packaged in 3-track sleeve for 1st 12″, stickered “4 special mixes of ‘It’s a Sin’”.

A1 and B1 “remixed in the U.K. for the USA”
A1 AKA “Phil Harding Latin Vocal Mix”
A2 as “Phil Harding Latin Dub Mix”

Sleeve mistakenly lists:
(Album version can be heard on the forthcoming album, “Jealousy”-ELT-46972)

Helena Springs courtesy of Arista Records.

(Album version can be heard on the LP, “Actually”-ELJ-46972)
“You Know Where You Went Wrong” (Not Available on the album “Actually”-ELJ-46972)

Find The 12″ on DISCOGS

EQUIPMENT USED:
Turntable: Pro-Ject Debut III
Cartridge: Ortofon Super
Stylus: Ortofon OM Stylus 30
Bellari VP130 Tube Phono Preamp
Soundcard: ESI Juli@
VPI HW 16.5 Record Cleaning Machine
Brother MFC-6490CW Professional Series Scanner

SOFTWARE USED:
Adobe Audition 3.0 (Recording)
Adobe Photoshop CS5
ClickRepair
dBpoweramp
Playlist Creator

RESTORATION NOTES:
All vinyl rips are recorded @ 32bit/float
Downsampled to 24bit/96kHz and16bit /44kHz using iZotope RX Advanced 2
FLAC (Level Eight)
MP3 (320kbps)
Artwork scanned at 600dpi

PW: burningtheground

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With some bad and a lot of good times, this blog has made it into its 26th month and reached its 200th post. I had many glorious ideas, all discarded eventually, what I would write tonight. In the end, I settled for an unashamed display of self-complacency. Thus I went through the pages of this blog and concocted sort of a chart list of the best stuff I put online. Needless to say that these mini-charts are exclusively based on my own peculiar likings, but that's what blogs are all about. This is what I came up with, three in each category ... and phew, choices were hard:




Thanks to all those who contributed to this blog by writing comments or getting in contact with me!

I wish you all the best. Keep tuned in to this blog.

... to conclude, the following song comes just for the fun of it, and what fun it is! The incomparable Sugar Pie DeSanto, usually appearing barefeet on stage and famously leaving her high heel sneakers in the locker ('cause they hurt her toesies so bad). This tune was first presented in Billboard on a 21st of March which is a nice coincidence ... from 1964 and just as fresh and peachy as when it was recorded.

Sugar Pie DeSanto: »Slip-In Mules (No High Heel Sneakers)« on Checker # 1073A (1964):