blanket garden

Summer Fave #3: concerts on the square

Quite possibly my favorite outdoor event of Madison, and I firmly believe no outdoor-lawn-music-picnic event will ever be good enough.

Felt inspired by cereal milk ice cream... for a couple years now. Let's just say my "time to action" or "turnaround time" or "reflex time" is not great.

The point was to send off Jules to her honeymoon and rest of her life, so I asked her what her favorite General Mills cereal is, and she picked the prettiest one. Lucky Charms, hold the charms please. I literally can't stop gazing at this bowl of beautiful artificial color.

After a good overnight soaking in beef milk, the milk (which I should've pictured) was a thick dark pastel blue.

So armed with the (now-expired) Cafe du Monde beignet mix Jules got me over a year ago, I decided to be cheeky and make beignets for Jules (and everyone else) with Jules' favorite cereal from Jules' place of employment for Jules' first and last Concert on the Square event... 

with Jules' help.

Here's the thing about 6-mo expired beignet mix. They don't really puff up when frying.

I mean, some of them did. Which is why half were only coated in cinnamon sugar (left) and half were stuffable and dusted with powdered sugar (right).

Here is where can you only begin to understand my love for Wednesday nights during six weeks of mid summer in Madison. At 3pm, you can claim your spot with picnic blankets, baby blankets, table cloths, sleeping bags, comforters, one blanket two blanket red blanket blue blanket. And people here just like.. respect that. You mean to tell me I can go set up my blanket at 3 and no one will touch it until 6 or 7 when the concert actually starts? Yup. Something tells me this wouldn't really fly in, say, Central Park.

The contrast and colors reminded me of Lucky Charms marshmallows or Keukenhof, which, if you'll let me pout a little bit about how the gardens are only bloomed and beautiful (and open) March to May.. but I'll be going to the Netherlands in August. Just my luck, huh? *Pouts* *But quickly gets over it because I get to go to three more new cities before my move.*


So anyways with that naturally artificially colored milk, I made a simple pastry filling. Blue milk plus yellow egg yolks makes this lovely and appetizing dull green. Too bad the theme wasn't Shrek or Nickelodeon slime.
And then I very unprofessionally filled the donuts with a knife and Ziploc snack bag. And the end result was great anyways. Because let's be real.. it's fried, it's sugar, it's custard.

It's alright under the sun with all my favorite people hovered around the best picnic spread (that obviously includes my beloved pickle popcorn). This is summer.

Shoutout to my helper and expert sorter of marshmallows... who else? Jules!

Hint: take advantage of sedimentation.