Candied Kale, Swiss Chard, Marshmallows and Pecans

Will Cotton’s Candied Kale Salad

https://youtube.com/watch?v=F57P9C4SAW4%3Frel%3D0%2520frameborder%3D0%2520allowfullscreen

  • Will Cotton’s Candied Kale Salad
  • Will Cotton’s Candied Kale Salad
    Will Cotton, Abandoned (Churro Cabin), 2002, oil on linen, 60 x 60 inches, Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery
  • Will Cotton’s Candied Kale Salad
    Will Cotton, Taffy, 2007, oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches, Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery
  • Will Cotton’s Candied Kale Salad
    Will Cotton, Landfill, 2012, oil on linen, 54 x 82 inches, Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery
  • Will Cotton’s Candied Kale Salad
  • Will Cotton’s Candied Kale Salad

NOTES

Unless you are as fanatical a sweet tooth as Will, this will most likely be a conceptual salad exercise for you. That said, you can use any range of ingredients, so the candy salad can be a creative way to serve a medley of your favorite desserts, from homemade marshmallows, to peppermint bark.

INSTRUCTIONS

Do Ahead: Make the Candied Kale (drying may take 12 to 36 hours)

Beat the egg whites until frothy, and add a few drops of vodka (this helps the sugar coating dry faster).

Using a paintbrush or pastry brush, coat both sides of a clean, dry kale leaf with the beaten egg white.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Pour sugar over the leaf generously, and place on the baking sheet to dry.

After 36 hours, the kale should be crystallized. Assemble the salad, using the kale as your base, adding your desired toppings to decorate. Do not toss.

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

HARD

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SERVES

6

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PREP TIME

20 MINS

Candied Kale Salad

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    bunch kale, leaves washed and very dry
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    egg white
  • 3-6 
     
    drops of 100 proof vodka
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    white sugar

Toppings

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    Strawberry marshmallows
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    Candied pecans
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    Candied violets
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    Candied rose petals
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    Fresh lavender
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    Dried cranberries

INSTRUCTIONS

Do Ahead: Make the Candied Kale (drying may take 12 to 36 hours)

Beat the egg whites until frothy, and add a few drops of vodka (this helps the sugar coating dry faster).

Using a paintbrush or pastry brush, coat both sides of a clean, dry kale leaf with the beaten egg white.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Pour sugar over the leaf generously, and place on the baking sheet to dry.

After 36 hours, the kale should be crystallized. Assemble the salad, using the kale as your base, adding your desired toppings to decorate. Do not toss.

Will Cotton’s eyes lit up the moment he caught a glimpse of the cupcake tattoo on my inner wrist.  This would be the rare occasion when I might not regret that decision made by my 18 year old self. We were seated next to one another at a dinner for our mutual friend, chef Amy Rose Thielen, and by the end of the meal, the illustrious painter was using a sharpie to expand that postage stamp-sized cupcake into a candy sleeve, with ice cream cones and lollipops creeping up and down my forearm.

At the time we met, I was more familiar with Will’s work than I let on, from his most well-known image of Katy Perry on her Teenage Dream album cover, to his giant cotton candy landscape paintings that have always struck a cord in me. Will was an inspiration to me as a young artist, a touchstone at the time when I was experimenting with how I might use my own obsessive baking practice to play with notions of idealized femininity. Before salad, I used baked goods as props for my photos and videos, whether I was tap dancing on them in a parking lot, or documenting various stages of their decay in my kitchen. Given our shared subject matter, Will was naturally one of my early artist crushes. A decade later, I still find myself staring at his candy queens and spun sugar landscapes with the feeling that I might never be sated. Indulgent as these images are, there is certainly something subversive in the excess of it all. The women he paints are trapped in a world of saccharine sweets, nearly swallowed by their own environment.

Will and Rose, his lovely wife and sometimes model, really love sugar, not just as subject matter, but in real life. Will actually bakes everything he paints himself, so it was no surprise that he jumped at the chance to develop a “candy salad” for our date.

Now, will dark leafy greens make it into his paintings? I suspect not, but a girl can hope.

Will Cotton in his own words

Julia Sherman: You directed the Katy Perry Teenage Dream video. How did it feel to work with so many people, as opposed to on your own, in this much more pop medium?

Will Cotton: I was artistic director on the shoot for Katy Perry’s Teenage dream video. We filmed over a weekend on a soundstage in LA. On day one, we decided to add a thirty foot tall pink volcano and some giant sugar cubes to the set. The volcano came in on a truck that afternoon, and the prop guys made the sugar cubes in about 20 minutes. It was fantastic working with professionals like that. When I make sets and props in my studio it takes months.

JS: How is it different to paint Rose [Will’s wife], as opposed to another model?

WC: Most of the people in my paintings function like actors playing different roles. When I paint Rose it really matters that it’s her; she’s playing a part, but she’s also playing herself.

JS: The cakes in so many of your paintings get to glop and melt, but ladies stay pristine. What is the relationship between the subject and the setting?

WC: It’s fantasy. The normal rules don’t apply.

JS: What is it about excess and indulgence that makes you want to paint?

WC: I’ve lived it. Insatiability is fascinating.

JS: When and how did Candyland make its way into your work?

WC: So many of us Americans grew up playing Candyland. Back in the 90’s I came across the board I’d played on as a child. I was just getting into painting about overindulgence and desire, and I saw the potential for a common language in that imagery.

JS: You bake the cakes and sweets you paint, and you make the costumes too. You have a mixed media practice, in some ways. How is it important to you that you actually make the sweets yourself and shoot the photos that you paint from?

WC: I love to control the whole process. All the details really matter.

JS: Are you a self-taught baker?

WC: I’ve taken classes at ICE in New York, and spent a day working with Philippe Andrieu at Ladurée in Paris, but I’ve picked up most of it on my own, yes. Lots of trial and error.

JS: Most of these things are so ephemeral. They’d start to melt or trot with time. What’s the most difficult of the confections to work with?

WC: I’ve found ways to make realistic ice cream and cotton candy that don’t melt. Those are the tough ones.

JS: Oh wow, what’s the secret recipe?

WC:  It’s made from Crisco, Karo syrup, and powdered sugar.

JS: Tell me about your bake-off competitions?

WC: I host a bake off competition in my studio each year with a small group of artist friends. We always have a special guest judge, and one time Martha [Stewart] agreed to do it. The competition got pretty serious that year.

JS: Is your sugar consumption off the charts?

WC: I often think about pie all day long.