Month: June 2017

Star vs. the Forces of Evil

Posted on by cartooncravings

Episode: The Banagic Incident
Banagic Ice Cream

Star vs. the Forces of Evil promises a little weird, a little wild, and a good time. I’d have to say it delivers. If a magic-wielding, monster-fighting princess from another dimension living as a foreign exchange student on Earth doesn’t fit that description, I don’t know what does. How does this even happen anyway? Well, Star isn’t what one would call a “typical princess.” She’s reckless and irresponsible and sets her kingdom on fire shortly after receiving a great family heirloom, The Royal Magic Wand. Her parents send her to Earth to train and she takes up residence in the Diaz household. This was done as a safety measure, but Star still finds plenty of ways to get into trouble. When she’s not narwhal blasting some ill-intentioned monsters or cutting her way into other dimensions, she’s got to handle everyday life in a place entirely new to her.

Star lives a pretty exciting life, but even she isn’t safe from boredom. (It’s her biggest fear.) She was going to have to renounce her vow to never have a dull day until she saw a magazine ad for The Banagic Wand. It’s one of those “As Featured on TV” products that you see in those late night commercials. “Designed by leading freeze-ologists, The Banagic Wand uses state-of-the-art molecular ice-stronomy to frostulate your sizzle zones and chill you out.” (It makes banana ice cream.) Star can’t resist this “Earth Magic” and insists on immediately finding a “Better Store” where it’s sold. (Supplies are limited.) But Marco refuses to skip his karate class, so Star’s on her own. She wasn’t doing too badly until she mistook the staff of a pirate-themed restaurant for real pirates and trashes the place. They chase her all the way to the store and corner her right in front of The Banagic Wands. Star tells them that they need to “chill out,” so everyone does just that. Banagic Wand Party at Marco’s house!

Recipe makes one 2-cup serving

Ingredients

4 ripe bananas

Yellow food coloring

Directions

Peel and thinly slice the bananas. Freeze the banana slices for at least two hours. Place the frozen banana slices in a food processor. Blend, occasionally scraping down the sides of the processor, until the bananas become creamy. Add a little yellow food coloring and blend a few more seconds. Scrape out of the food processor. (You can fill a piping bag with the banana ice cream and pipe into a bowl to give it more of a soft serve look.)  Enjoy immediately!

StarvstheFOEStarvstFOE Ban

Star completes her quest, conquers her boredom, and feels like she’s mastered Earth. Marco is impressed and admits that he underestimated her. Star’s not too happy to hear that though and she pushes Marco’s Banagic ice cream out of his hands. I wasn’t surprised that Star found a Banagic Wand, but I was surprised that it actually worked. I’ve gotten sucked in by enough infomercials to know that they can’t all be trusted. Well Banagic Wand or not, banana ice cream is pretty magical. “I’m totally chilled out!”

Tune in next week for more Cartoon Cravings!

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Posted on by cartooncravings

Cookies

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a “story of greed, sex, and murder” and cartoons! That sounds like one entertaining movie, huh? “You’d better believe it, buster.” Here’s the scenario: a cartoon rabbit named Roger, whose whole purpose in life is to make people laugh, has been accused of murder and the only guy who can clear Roger Rabbit’s name and save him from a vat of Judge Doom’s Dip is a booze-drinking, toon-hating, private investigator named Eddie Valiant. Think film noir but with cartoons. And boy, does this have cartoons! This movie is jammed-packed with animated stars. There’s Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny (Sharing the screen!), Donald Duck and Daffy Duck (Also together.), Betty Boop, Droopy, Woody Woodpecker, and many more familiar faces. But as much as I adore all the cameos, my favorite Toon in this film is Roger. I was crazy about the guy before the opening cartoon even had a chance to end.

This film jumps straight into a Maroon Cartoon starring Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman called Somethin’s Cookin’. When Baby Herman’s mother goes out, she leaves her son in Roger’s care. (And threatens to send Roger back to the science lab if he doesn’t take good care of Baby Herman.) Now this wouldn’t be much of a cartoon if Roger was a perfect babysitter and Baby Herman didn’t get in any trouble, so of course Baby Herman escapes from his playpen as soon as Mrs. Herman is gone. He sees a full cookie jar sitting atop the refrigerator and heads straight for it. Baby Herman makes his way through the dangerous kitchen unscathed and gets himself a golden, crinkly cookie, but Roger doesn’t fare as well and ends up with the refrigerator on his head.

Recipe makes about 20 peanut butter crinkle cookies

Ingredients

½ cup shortening

½ cup peanut butter

½ cup sugar, plus more for rolling cookies

½ cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ¼ cups flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.

In a stand mixer on medium speed, beat the shortening, peanut butter, and sugars until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add the egg and the vanilla. Gradually add the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Shape the dough into rounded tablespoon sized balls. Roll the dough balls in sugar and place on parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake until cookies are golden, 10-12 minutes.

Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for 5 minutes before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely. Now you can fill up that cookie jar!

WhoFramedRogerCookieWhoFramedRRCookie (2)

Baby Herman looks awfully happy to get that cookie. Sure he’s just acting, but he’s believable. I remember how shocked I was to see his true self when I watched this movie for the first time. He’s not really a sweet baby, so I wasn’t much of a fan. But my love for Roger only grew as the movie went on. He and all of the other cartoon characters were brought to life so perfectly in a live-action film, I really believed that the Toons and humans acted together. (It was tough for me to accept that Roger didn’t exist in “real life.”) But even if Roger isn’t “real,” the laughs he’s given me are. And “a laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it’s the only weapon we have.”

Tune in next week for more Cartoon Cravings!

Rabbit of Seville

Posted on by cartooncravings

Fruit Salad

The month of June always gets me thinking about a certain Looney Tune. Oh, you know the one. Cartoon Network used to do a marathon in honor of the guy. What was that called? June Something. June Duck! No, that’s not right. (Who would want to watch something called June Duck?) Now I remember! It was June Bugs. I know, like I could ever forget June Bugs. Bugs Bunny is one of my favorite cartoon characters EVER, so a weekend of nothing but Bugs was kind of a big deal to me. Yeah, the days of June Bugs are long gone but that can’t stop me from celebrating the rabbit. I think it’s time for my own June Bugs marathon. I can see the drama, the music (Yeah, “see” the music.), the pageantry, the double and triple-takes, the action, and the romance now. But what I really need to be seeing is the food. Most of the time Bugs just eats plain old carrots or someone’s trying to eat Bugs, but there’s got to be something I can make. (It would be much easier if I did this after watching all the cartoons.) Well, I do have one idea.

While playing around online, I stumbled across some stuff about Bugs Bunny making a fruit salad on Elmer Fudd’s head. I wondered what cartoon that could possibly be in. I hit myself when I found out that it’s Rabbit of Seville. How did I not remember that? Rabbit of Seville was, is, and always will be my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon. I could sit there and watch Bugs shave and beautify Elmer Fudd all day. (Is that weird?) Now where does the fruit salad come in? I’m getting there. You see, Elmer Fudd was chasing Bugs (Big surprise there.) and the chase leads to an amphitheater (The Hollywood Bowl) where The Barber of Seville is to be performed. Bugs runs in through an open stage door and Elmer follows and ends up on stage. Bugs opens the curtain and the orchestra starts playing. The next thing you know, Bugs “The Barber” scoops up Elmer and gives him quite the shave. The next time Elmer finds himself in the barber chair, Bugs massages Elmer’s head and then uses it as the perfect base for a fruit salad. He piles on some lettuce, a bunch of whole fruit, some carrots (This is Bugs Bunny we’re taking about here.), whipped cream (At least I hope it is.), and tops it all off with a cherry. Bugs shows his masterpiece to Elmer Fudd, but he doesn’t seem to like it too much and goes after Bugs with a razor.

Recipe makes one fruit salad

Ingredients

This is a chance to get creative, so add any fruits or veggies that you see fit. Here’s what I used.

4 lettuce leaves

7 red apples

6 bananas

5 oranges

4 carrots

3 plums

4 lemons

3 pears

2 pale skinned white nectarines

2 small bunches of grapes

1 small pineapple

1 cherry

1-2 (15 ounce) cans whipped cream-I used one whole can and could’ve easily used another

 

Directions

Bugs starts with a ring of cream but whipped cream melts away too quickly, (It was already sliding before I got a picture.) so I started with a bed of 4 lettuce leaves. Toss in an orange, a carrot, an apple and a lemon, and two carrots, an orange, and a plum/apple. Slice one carrot and add it. Toss the fruit salad. Mysterious white and dark stuff started showing up here so that’s why I added the nectarines (They were the palest produce I could find.) and the plums. Add a pineapple and an apple.

Okay, now here’s where it gets confusing and crazy. Bugs tosses on so much stuff so quickly and the fruits change to other ones in midair or in the stack. So just stack as much fruit as you want in whatever way suits you.

This is kind of the order Bugs throws the fruit (It was different each time I watched it.), so I sort of followed that. I just used less fruit because it was already out of hand and the last thing I needed were more apples. He adds an apple and a lemon, a banana and an orange, and a pear, an orange, and an apple. Then he adds an apple and a banana, an apple, an orange, and a pear, an apple and a lemon, a pear and an apple, and an orange, a banana, and a small bunch of grapes. Then he adds an apple, a pear, and an orange, an apple and a banana, an apple and an orange, an orange/apple and a banana, and an apple, a pear, and a mystery shape that looks like a yellow bell pepper (I used another lemon). Then he adds an apple and a banana, an apple, an orange, and a small lemon, an lemon and a banana, an apple, a banana, and an orange, and an orange and an apple. (Whew!)

Then spray on some whipped cream. Place a cherry on top and there you have it!

Rabbit of Seville Fruit SaladRabbit of Seville Fruit

Ugh! You don’t know how badly I wanted to build this on someone’s head! (I did try.) But it’s hard enough to build it on a flat surface. You’d think that these “stacking recipes” would be easy, but gravity is a force to be reckoned with. So no, this is not a normal fruit salad, but Bugs Bunny isn’t a normal rabbit. And he’s definitely not a normal barber. If the fruit salad wasn’t enough to convince you, then maybe Bugs using hair restorer on Elmer Fudd’s face and using an itty bitty lawnmower to shave him might. That or Bugs using fertilizer and growing flowers on Elmer’s head. Yeah, he doesn’t like that too much either. This time he goes after Bugs with an axe. And then they have a weapons chase, and then they have a wedding, and then Bugs drops Elmer Fudd from really high up and he falls into a cake! And I just watched this cartoon five times in a row and I still can’t get tired of it. (I never will.) But if I plan on making it through all of Bugs’ cartoons in one busy weekend, I better move on. “Ehh…next?”

 

Tune in next week for more Cartoon Cravings!