Inception

Instructions

Fill a shaker with ice and add all ingredients except the orange zest. Shake for about a minute until chilly as a Canadian ski resort. Pour into a coupe glass and wipe your orange peel around the rim before dropping it into the cocktail. Serve chilled.

Instructions

For the Pastry:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl until fully incorporated. Add butter; you can either use two knives to “cut” the butter into the flour (helpful tutuorial here), or you can get in there with your hands and break up the butter until pea-size lumps form. Drizzle 3 Tbsp. ice water over mixture and continue to mix until the lumps start to pull together. Drop onto a cutting board and add more ice water by 1/2-tablespoonfuls until the dough comes together.

Gather the dough into a tight ball; flatten into a disk. Wrap in plastic; chill until firm, at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.

When you’re ready to pre-bake your crust, remove your dough from the fridge and let sit for 5-10 minutes to allow dough to soften just a bit. Roll out dough on a lightly floured sheet of parchment paper to a 12" round (dough should be between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick).

Flip the crust into a 9 inch tart; press onto bottom and up sides of dish to form the rim of the tart. Using a cutting board, press down on the top of the crust so that you are left with a clean cut around the rim of the tart pan. Freeze any excess dough.

Now it’s time to pre-bake your crust! Line dough with foil; fill with dried beans or pie weights. Be sure to cover the edges of the crust so that they do not brown too quickly in the oven.

Bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil and beans. Return to oven and bake until crust is light golden brown, 25–30 minutes longer. Let crust cool completely. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.

For the Filling:

Heat olive oil in a medium skillet. Add onion and caramelize over low-medium heat, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Once fully translucent (about 10 minutes), remove from heat and combine with cream cheese, cream, thyme, and a pinch more each of salt and pepper.

Spread the cheese mixture along the bottom of the chilled pastry dough, at an even thickness. Continue to refrigerate while you cut your vegetables.

Using a mandolin, thinly slice eggplant, zucchini, squash, and sweet potato into strips. When you place them into the tart, you will want them to be the same height, so you may need to fold and slice the vegetable strips lengthwise if necessary.

Form the first piece of eggplant into a tight spiral shape—place this coil into the center of the cheese, pushing down slightly to ensure that the spiral stands up on its own. Build on this shape with more strips of eggplant, staggering one strip at a time until you have an inner core of overlapping purple spiral.

Lay in a strip or two of sweet potato, followed by a strip or two more of eggplant—this will cause the colors to bleed into one another. Next, commit to your sweet potato ring, continuing to add strips of orange until you get to halfway from the center. Gradually lay in strips of yellow squash, again creating a color bleed effect and eventually adding only the yellow squash for a purely yellow "zone".

Continue until you are ready to begin layering in the green zucchini. Remember, through it all, keep the strips at an equal height, pushing down slightly to ensure they are anchored into the cheese mix as a base. Finish off with a few strips of eggplant—because sometimes outside is in and the inside is out and you never REALLY know what level you’re on…

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Spray the top of the tart vegetables with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover the rim of the crust with aluminum foil to prevent burning, and bake for 60 minutes. Uncover the pastry rim and bake at 400 for 15 more minutes, monitoring crusts to ensure they don’t burn.

Remove tart from the oven and set on a cooling rack for 10 minutes, sprinkling with thyme leaves. Drop tart rim and, using a sharp knife, cut into eighths to serve.

Instructions

Place chocolate kisses in freezer and chill for at least 1 hour.

Meanwhile, bring cherries, water, and sugar to a boil, simmering for a couple of minutes, allowing them to release juices. Turn off heat and mash cherries with a fork or masher, further releasing juice. Let sit for 15-20 minutes, and strain.

Rinse out saucepan and add caramel. Heat only briefly to soften, and add cherry syrup, stirring with a rubber spatula to incorporate. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Remove kisses from freezer. Being sure not to handle them excessively (or the chocolate will melt!), use a sharp knife to carve a hole into the bottom half of each kiss. I’ve found that using plastic wrap both buffers the heat of my fingers and prevents fingerprints from appearing on the surface of the chocolate. Note—you may need to place the kisses back into the freezer after this step depending on environmental heat/humidity.

Place a small strip of aluminum foil into an ice tray and press down slightly to create dents that a kiss can sit comfortably in. Fill the holes you’ve made in your “bottom halves” with caramel sauce. Do the same with your top halves, setting gently aside. Heat the tip of a sharp knife and quickly press into the rim of your bottom kiss to heat the chocolate—place your top halves over the bottom halves and press down. The caramel and slightly melted chocolate should glue the two halves together.

Once done, place into the freezer for at least 15 minutes to let your totems set. When ready to serve, let sit at room temperature for no more than a few minutes.

Then play with a bunch of mirrors and realize that it's IMPOSSIBLE not to see your phone camera lens in frame.

Weeeeeeeee

This last one wasn't me. It was just for reference.