This story is also published on the OC Weekly’s food blog, Stick a Fork In It. Difference here is I have more photos.

Sprinkles!!

Let’s say you somehow got talked into baking the cake for your little niece’s birthday party. You were thinking of a Betty Crocker box, and icing from the supermarket. Then you find out Niece would just adore you if you’d bake a cake in the shape of a certain Disney princess. You can’t buy that at Costco, and that luxe cupcakery you indulge yourself with can’t help out either. Now what?

Rent a character baking pan and get it done yourself. ABC Cake Decorating Shoppe in Orange sells and rents scores of cake pans shaped like cartoon characters, and other random molds like a palm tree or a beer mug. Problem solved!

A small bit of the cake pans for rent

Well, problem solved if you know how to bake already. ABC is a large specialty store with a wide selection of ingredients, pans and tools for the expert baker. Candy making stuff? Sure. Need a brown paper cupcake liner so your home baked treats look like the ones at the chichi cupcake shops? Yup. Rental equipment like multi-tiered wedding cake stands? Got that.

The best artificial flavor essences New Jersey ever devised

Wait, you don’t have the slightest idea how to bake or decorate cakes and cookies? Then take a class. In the four decades that ABC has been in business, battalions of Scouts, shoals of schoolkids, and droves of DIY-ers have learned to squeeze colored goo artfully from a piping bag.

Still flustered by your lacking cake skills? Have ABC bake you a custom cake in their production kitchen–and why not use that princess cake pan for your niece. I could have told you in paragraph one that their pros will bake and decorate just about anything you want, but then you’d miss the work fun in doing it yourself.

I've driven past this strip mall a hundred times before I spotted ABC

ABC Cake Decorating Shoppe and Bakery
429 N. Tustin St.
Orange, CA 92867
714-633-2055

Nothing says Independence Day like slow smoked barbecue, American style. Hope everyone had a good Fourth. Beside the requisite burgers and dogs, I cooked brisket and pork ribs on the Komodo Kamado to celebrate our glorious release from British tyranny.

This is the best brisket that I’ve ever made, thanks to the steady temperatures held by the Komodo. I haven’t cooked all that many briskets in the past because my Weber Smokey Mountain doesn’t accomodate their large size, but with the Komodo, cooker capacity isn’t an excuse to avoid cooking this most difficult of traditional barbecue cuts.

The second session on the Komodo fared far better than my first. Dennis, the owner of the Komodo company, gave me some tips, and the cooker stayed pegged at 200 degrees F for many long hours.

I’m taking the next few days off. Going to race cars up in Northern California. Keeps tabs on my race team at the 24 Hours of Lemons!

Live fire is a fickle mistress. Her gentle embers caress us into barbecue bliss. Or she can burn the bejeesus out of beef brisket.

I started my first cook session in the Komodo Kamado and set off to my job. The fire burned unattended with a twelve pound slab of meat. Results fell somewhere between bliss and bejeesus. The cooker temperature had climbed up from 230 degrees to 300 while I toiled for lucre, and the brisket had speed-cooked to slightly overdone by the time I came home. Not the optimal slow and low cook, but it turned out still edible.

A little more time spent twiddling the vent controls, and I’ll learn to better manage the fire in this new piece of equipment. Should’ve known better than to leave her burning without me.

(Full disclosure: the manufacturer provided this unit for review)

Meet the Komodo Kamado, my new outdoor oven. I’d call it a barbecue pit, but it does more than long, slow smoke cooking. I’d call it a grill, but it’s not limited to high temperature, direct heat grilling. Because it’s built from refractory materials similar to what kilns and furnaces are made of, it’s also an oven that easily withstands cooking temperatures of 1000 degrees F. Why would you need or want that?

If you’re a pizza freak like me, you can use the Komodo to bake the sort of charred-bottom, Naples style pizzas possible only in wood or coal burning ovens. Fans of American pizza restaurants like A16 (San Francisco), Mozza (Los Angeles), Grimaldi’s, Patsy’s, and Totonno’s (New York), Frank Pepe’s , or Sally’s Apizza (New Haven) know the sort of crust I’m talking about. It’s impossible to attempt pizza like this at home, unless you have an oven that can hit 800 degrees. Now I do!

I’m breaking in the kamado this week, and learning how to control its firebox. I learned to use the Minion method of starting a low temperature charcoal fire in the Weber, and that’s what I’m employing with the Komodo. Let’s look at some differences between the Weber and the Komodo.

The Komodo dwarfs a Weber Smokey Mountain, the smoker I’ve been using for several years with excellent results. The Komodo is made of two different layers of a ceramic-like refractory material. Its dense inner wall absorbs and reflects heat back into the cooking chamber. The thinner outer wall insulates that heat within the vessel. All that mass should keep cooking temperatures very stable no matter the weather or wind conditions.

The draft door controls air intake to the firebox. The precision CNC-machined stainless door slides in and out smoothly, like a well-spittled trombone. Once the fire gets near the target temperature, the door is closed, and the daisywheel vent provides finer heat adjustment. The wood knob is beautifully turned from weather resistant teak. As a former machinist, I appreciate the Kamado’s extraordinary build quality.

The floor of the cooker is level with the draft door, which eases ash cleanup. Notice the cleanly machined metalwork.

The round “eye” next to the draft door is a port for temperature control devices like the BBQ Guru or the Stoker.

Heat and smoke exhaust past this “hat.” The heavy stainless steel rod threads into its mate, which is cast permanently into the lid. A ceramic gasket material shuts out air effectively when it’s time to put out the fire.

Interior view of the lid. The ovoid shape of the lid is designed to reflect heat evenly across the entire grill surface. The Supreme Plus package comes with a top grill made of the 3/8″ stainless steel rod, and the main grill below it is made of the standard 1/4″ stainless rod. There is room for a third grill below.

The Komodo’s grill is much roomier than the WSM’s. Where I barely had space to fit a puny 9 pound slab of beef brisket on the Weber, I have plenty of room for a 15 pound monster brisket on the Komodo.

The lid weighs a whopping 108 pounds, but is spring loaded for effortless opening. Let’s look at how that works.

This is the heavy duty spring that lifts the lid. Notice the preload tension in the lid-closed position. Hinges are cast permanently into the Komodo, unlike hinges from other kamado manufacturers that require constant re-tightening.

Easily adjustable tension in the spring hoists the lid when the latch is opened.

A sleek fairing increases top speed on this bluff beast. Mine is made of black fiberglass, but current productions of the Supreme Plus model use a stainless steel cover.

The lifting handle is made from stout 3/4″ stainless rod. It takes a serious bending jig to form that material into a graceful arc. When the lid is closed, the triangular piece in the center latches it shut automatically.

Closeup view of the lifting handle’s weld. When a nice looking bead isn’t ground smooth, it’s called a “show weld.” It’s not easy to lay down a tiny bead on thick material like that.

Its massive size, over the top features, and top notch build quality makes the Komodo the Bugatti Veyron of ceramic cookers. While I’ll never be able to afford the Bugatti, ever, even I, with modest means, could save up to splurge on this seriously fancy smoker / grill / oven.

In the next episode of the Black Dragon: “Gentlemen, start your engines…”