Fairy Tales... In This Moment

“Excuse me, can you tell me what you’ve heard about my life? Maybe a dirty little fairy tale, a girl of the night. I heard that I grew up filthy, a trailer park queen. Drop out, pregnant, statistical teen.”

— In This Moment, Black Widow, "Sex Metal Barbie"

It's Miscellaneous Monday! I wanted to do something a bit different today, so we're not going to talk about a book.

We're going to talk about an album.

Which is kind of like a book of poetry. It's just set to music. And I've been wanting to make something for this particular album for a very long time.

I have a lot to say, so get ready.

When it first came out in 2014, my brother and I realized that In This Moment's Black Widow album was made up of songs that all had fairy tale elements to it, even if they seemed a bit twisted (the album's metal, if you didn't know) and focused on weaknesses becoming strengths. We didn't really sit down to figure them all out back then, but I think I've managed to get them all since then.

The first song is instrumental, and I thought of it as a prologue.

Song number two is "Sex Metal Barbie." This one reminded me of Cinderella. The lyrics say, "I'll be the belle of the brawl," and Cinderella caught the Prince's attention at the ball. Then it says, "low class, white trash," which Cinderella was thought to be, due to the way her step-mother treated her.

Number three is "Big Bad Wolf." This one made me think of The Three Little Pigs. The first lyrics that stand out are in the chorus and say, "Pig, Pig, won't you let me in." It immediately makes you think about the wolf trying to get into their houses.

Four is "Dirty Pretty." This one is really straight-forward. It starts off with "Mirror, mirror, on the wall," which screams Snow White.

The fifth song was much harder. "Black Widow" talks about using poison to kill a lover. Technically Marvel's Black Widow is Disney, but I wanted to see if I could match it up to any of the more classic Disney stories. Eventually, I landed on Mulan. She was definitely a killer, even if it wasn't by poison. The lyrics that really made that choice stick in my mind are, "I'm stripping down, your face is pale." It made me think of the reaction Mulan got after it came out that she was a woman.

Song six is "Sexual Hallucination." As soon as anyone mentions hallucinations and Disney, people think of Alice in Wonderland. The song talks about intoxication, a psychotic voice,  flying, and a trip. Alice felt fitting.

Number seven was another hard one. "Sick Like Me." It's hard to think of any of the Disney women as being sick/ deranged. Eventually, I really started focusing on the lyrics, "feed the animal in you." Pairing that with the lyrics, "at your ugliest, I always say, you're beautiful and sick like me," really helped me connect this song to Beauty and the Beast. Belle, though she was beautiful, was considered to be... off... by the rest of her town.

Eight is called "Bloody Creature Poster Girl." This one reminded me a lot of The Little Mermaid, especially with the lyrics, "original material girl," and the mention of pearls.

Song number nine is "The Fighter," and, like movie I paired it with, it's one of my favorites. The woman had to be a fighter. She didn't need a man to rescue her because she could tie her own sandals and everything (do you see where I'm going with this?). The nod to Medusa was the final straw. This one was Megaera from Hercules.

The tenth song  was another difficult one. "Bones" is a really dark song, and I was having the hardest time finding a fit for it. But the idea of smearing lipstick, "waiting for you to rescue me, my love," and coming back from the dead, made me think of Sleeping Beauty.

Eleven is "Natural Born Sinner." This one is very heavy on religion and on being made to feel ashamed for being born the way you were. Fire and burning are brought up as well, which reminded me of Esmeralda having to deal with Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Number twelve is spoken and I couldn't pair this with anything. Maybe it does fit with a specific fairy tale and I just missed it.

The last song is called "Out of Hell." It starts out about a young girl then changes to be about a young boy. Both of them have lost their home and are in danger. A monster is telling the girl that she's worthless even as it's using her. The boy's life rotates around taking drugs. It all sounded a lot like Hansel and Gretel, who were both abandoned by their parents and left for dead, only to be taken by a witch. The witch uses Gretel as a slave while fattening Hansel up with cakes and candy.

I had to make a cake, and I wanted to have caramel in it because it's so sugary and sweet. But it needed to be a bit more adult than normal since these fairy tales were so much darker than the Disney ones, so I decided to put bourbon in the caramel.

Sticking with the theme of turning weakness into a strength, I wanted my buttercream to have some spice to it, but I also wanted it to be cozy because family and home are both huge themes in fairy tales (is it possible for a taste to be cozy? I think so, but I'm weird). This made me think of a Chai-Spiced buttercream.

I liked the idea of three layers because of The Three Little Pigs, but I also liked the idea of it being small.

As for the cake... apples are featured in a lot of fairy tales, and were used in some of In This Moment's designs.

Obviously, I had to try to replicate one of their designs on my little layer cake... this is about them, you know.

Apple Cake,  divided into 3

-1 c  all-purpose flour

-1/2 tsp  baking powder

-1/4 tsp  baking soda

-1/4 tsp  salt

-1/2 tsp  ground cinnamon

-1/2 stick  unsalted butter

-1/4 c  light brown sugar, packed

-1/4 c  white sugar

-1 egg

-3/4 tsp  vanilla extract

-1 1/2 c  Granny Smith apples, diced

1.  In a medium-sized bowl, mix the apples, egg, sugars, and butter.
2. Add the vanilla, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and baking powder, and stir in.
3. One cup at a time, add the flour and stir until it's completely incorporated.
4. Grease the pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
5. Fill the pans until they're about half full. (My pans were about 4x 1.25 inches)
6. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven, and let them cool.
8. Take the cakes out of the pans and remove the parchment paper.
9. Cut the tops off of the cakes to give yourself a level surface. This will let you stack the cakes without worrying about them falling off of each other.

Chai-Spiced Buttercream

-1 c  unsalted butter, softened

-1 tsp  vanilla extract

-3/4 tsp  ground cardamom

-3/4 tsp  ground cinnamon

-1/4 tsp  ground ginger

-1/8 tsp  ground clove

-1/8 tsp  ground nutmeg

-2 c  powdered sugar

1. Beat the butter in a medium bowl until it's completely smooth.
2. Add the vanilla and the dry spices, and fold them in.
3. Slowly add the powdered sugar, and whisk it in until the frosting is smooth.
4. Set aside until it's time to assemble.

Bourbon Caramel

-1/2 stick  unsalted butter

-1/2 c  light brown sugar, packed

-1/4 c  heavy cream

-2 tsp  bourbon (use one you like... you'll be able to taste it. I used TX Bourbon from F&R Distilling)

1. In a small sauce pan, melt the butter down.
2. Add the brown sugar and whisk it in.
3. slowly add the cream, stirring the entire time. Be careful that it isn't too hot and you don't move too fast, or your caramel is going to curdle.
4. Bring the caramel to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer.
5. Cook it for 5 more minutes, stirring the entire time.
6. Remove the caramel from the heat and stir in the bourbon.
7. Set aside and let it cool.

To assemble, you start with a layer of cake, and cover it in frosting. I put strips of parchment paper under my cake to stop me from getting frosting all over my marble.

Next, you put on a thin layer of caramel. You don't need much—it's strong. I stuck the now frosted layer in the refrigerator after this step since it was warm in my house, but you can just let it sit for a minute to let the caramel firm up a bit. This will stop it from running when you put the next layer on.

Spread more frosting on the bottom of the next piece of cake and place it on top of the caramel. Then put more buttercream on the top and bring it down the sides to the first layer. it should fill in the gap between the two layers. Add another layer of caramel on top.

I stuck mine back in the fridge again to let it chill a little more, then frosted, stacked, and frosted the final layer of cake some more.

Really, you could stop here. I didn't feel like it though (I did say I was going to try to re-create one of their designs), so I covered the entire cake in fondant and painted a red cross on it with regular red food coloring. I also made apple chips to go on top. The one was just from the center of an Eve apple (I thought that would be funny. It also looked the way the apple was supposed to). The butterfly was a bit more difficult. I had to cut it myself because my cookie cutter was too big. Then, after sprinkling them with cinnamon and white sugar and baking all of my apple chips (200 degrees for about 3 hours, flipping them half way through), I sprayed the butterfly with black food coloring. You have to let it dry after spraying it, so I just stuck it back in the oven (which I had just turned off) for 5 more minutes.

Then you just place them on top and you're ready to rock!