A self-described wife, mom, theatrical school graduate, hobby collector and Newfoundlander living away from home, Elizabeth Ezekiel can now add edible artist to her list of credentials.
A native of Corner Brook, NL, Ezekiel now lives in Mount Stewart, PEI.
The 40-year-old’s first baking project took place during her junior high school years when she and her classmates made cinnamon rolls in a home economics class.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago, when Ezekiel ditched boxed cake mixes and ready-made icing and started baking from scratch.
While she admits to having some “mishaps” early in her baking ventures, she stuck with it and has been teaching herself the tricks of the trade ever since, albeit still through a bit of trial and error.
What started off as a simple yule log cake turned into a five-layer chocolate fudge cake, complete with realistic-looking bark, mushrooms and pinecones made out of marzipan, with crushed graham cracker crumbs and coconut that was dyed green for moss. – Contributed
“Now, I tend to steer myself towards more artistic baking rather than traditional things as a personal challenge,” she said.
Sometimes seasonal, sometimes festive, Ezekiel enjoys choosing a theme and seeing where it takes her.
“The further along I go in my journey, the more I realize I’m pretty inspired by nature. So a lot of my creations have that theme.”
Online community
Elizabeth Ezekiel was inspired by a photo of a puffin she saw on the internet, taken by Bonavista-based photographer Mark Gray, and turned it into an edible painting. – Contributed
The initial idea was to store the photos for use in a recipe book she was compiling to celebrate her daughter Clara’s 11th birthday.
“I arranged it so it was the recipe I used, followed by pictures I’d taken of the food I’d made, and pictures of Clara eating the creations. I did it in my handwriting/printing rather than typed because I figured it would be a little more personal that way and, hopefully, something that she can pass on to her kids someday,” Ezekiel said.
Both of Ezekiel’s brothers are avid Twitter users – Bill Short is an artist while Jimmy Short sets up cameras to capture images of wildlife around Western Newfoundland.
When Bill gave her Twitter account a shout-out via his account, Ezekiel’s followers picked up. She now has 650 followers.
The community of support through Twitter has been incredible, she says, and is a way for her to connect with people, the majority of whom are from her home province.
“I haven’t been home for two years now and I’m missing that connection with people … But I’ve made a community of wonderful friends (via Twitter) who share the same interest in baking as I do and we like to bounce recipes and ideas off each other.”
Edible art
Elizabeth Ezekiel created this hydrangea cake, which features a lemon pound cake with vanilla buttercream and a candy melt flower pot. – Contributed
When asked if her theatre degree has assisted in her baking ventures, Ezekiel said it has certainly helped with improvisation and thinking on her feet.
“I tend to veer off track sometimes when I’m following a recipe, and it doesn’t always go as I plan, so the ability to problem-solve and think quickly really does help,” she said.
For Ezekiel, baking during COVID-19 has helped keep her mind off the pandemic.
“I’ve taken on more involved projects that, sometimes, take up to a week to complete so, for the entire duration of the creation process, that’s all my mind is thinking about. The longer this goes on, the more artistic my baking becomes,” she says.
Ezekiel’s daughter, who turns 12 in April, is also honing her skills in the kitchen, particularly the decorating process.
“Clara loves sculpting things out of polymer clay, so when I do projects that involve making my own modelling chocolate or sculpting with fondant, she loves to look on and see how she can apply the techniques I’m using to her own work.”
Challenging work
This French apple tart was made with ginger gold apples and homemade apple jam. – Contributed
While it’s difficult to pinpoint her most challenging project, Ezekiel’s yule log cake had its share of hurdles.
Ezekiel limits her shopping to two-week intervals. While waiting to pick up supplies for her yule log, the project evolved into something quite different, she said.
“I had thought about it so long that it became a bit of an obsession. And, by the time it made it out of my brain and onto the plate, it was no longer a yule log.”
The creation was an eye-catching and likely palate-pleasing five-layer mini chocolate fudge cake with Nutella buttercream, marzipan mushrooms and acorns, almond-slice pinecones, dark chocolate bark dusted with cocoa and coconut, and graham cracker crumbs dyed green for moss.
For Ezekiel, seeing a project progress from scratch to a finished product is both satisfying and rewarding.
When it comes to taste-testing, she often turns to her daughter and husband Garrett. Her husband has been working from home this past year, she says, and appreciates her efforts.
“He gets an endless supply of treats and gets to be my taste-taster throughout the day.”
While her family is quick to indulge in her baking creations as soon as they are ready, Ezekiel said a recent project managed to stay in the fridge for two days as it was too beautiful to disturb. The project was a puffin painted completely out of chocolate and candy melts that was inspired by a photo posted on Twitter by well-known Bonavista, NL-based photographer, Mark Gray.
Other artistic projects
For her focaccia bread, Elizabeth Ezekiel created a design using peppers, rosemary, lavender buds, capers, goji berries, cherry tomato, green onions, red onion, asparagus, mushrooms, parsley, and sunflower seeds, then topped it with black truffle olive oil. – Contributed
Whether painting and hiding rocks (Ezekiel started PEI Rock Art Facebook group in 2019), putting together miniature dollhouses, turning her hand at embroidery, or creating diamond art paintings, Ezekiel enjoys expressing herself through her artistic endeavours.
When asked what advice she’d give others who would like to hone their baking skills, she suggests starting with the basics.
“If you like chocolate chip cookies, look for a good recipe that works for you. Make it according to the recipe the first time you make them,” she says.
“Then, make little changes the next time. Maybe try adding some nuts, using brown sugar instead of white, butterscotch chips instead of chocolate. Don’t be worried if you make mistakes. That’s how you learn. And I guess my biggest piece of advice is to have fun.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
