Every so often, I see images from a recipe I created eons ago, sometimes with attribution and sometimes without. They originated years before food blogging became a Thing, and I later shared them on a food blog I created in tandem with my mom (which is where the shared photos came from). After the latest sighting in the internet wilds, I thought it was high time I shared the recipe anew, via Fan Fare.

How these came to be: Back in about 2005, when I was first starting to get into party planning and theme catering just for fun, a friend asked me to cater a unique party. As a childhood cancer survivor, she and her mother had decided to throw a big bash celebrating two decades of being cancer-free. Having been to a few shindigs of mine before, she knew the kind of funky, funny theme food I loved to put together, and she wanted her own food to be really irreverent, sort of thumbing her nose and laughing in the face of cancer. An example she herself thought of was serving deviled eggs - with black olive "tumors" in them.

I asked if she really, REALLY wanted me to run with that concept, because if you want gallows humor, by god I will give you gallows humor. She insisted that she did, as long as it was still good food, so off I went, creating a whole menu devoted to giving a giant F-U to different kinds of cancer. It was a smash success, if I dare say so myself.

One of my favorite items I invented for that menu was the "Mammo-Graham", which I share with you here today as reminder to get your own done, if you have breasts yourself. As you can see, it's a fairly realistic edible depiction of the procedure, as anyone who has undergone one will attest.

They are actually very easy to put together, and, yes, inexpensive too, using potatoes as a base. One option for the, er, fleshy part of the Mammo-Grahams was making them out of marzipan, but that could get very pricy very quickly (and it’s a pretty strong flavor to eat in such large chunks). So I based them on an old-fashioned recipe for potato candy; it's normally used to make Easter Egg shapes. To make about a dozen, depending on, uh, cup size:

Potato Candy:

2 medium russet potatoes, peeled
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, chopped
2 16 ounce boxes powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or almond, actually, if you really wanted faux-marzipan)
2-3 tablespoons peanut butter
1-2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Other Mammo-Graham materials:

6 regular graham cracker rectangles, each broken into 2 squares
6 chocolate graham cracker rectangles, each broken into 2 squares
about 1/4 cup milk chocolate chips
about a dozen pink, tan, and brown M&Ms, preferably a combination plain and peanut (nipples come in many sizes!)

Boil the potatoes just until soft. Drain, mash, and measure 1/2 cup out into a mixing bowl. Make a small snack of the excess with some sour cream and chives, I say. Add butter into mixing bowl, mix in thoroughly, and let cool completely(very important). Add sugar and vanilla/almond extract, knead until smooth.

Roll some of the dough into various ball sizes. Then add the peanut butter and knead thoroughly again - you may want to make a few different complexions, so you can add it in in increments, make a couple more balls, and repeat. Follow the same process with the cocoa, adding incrementally to represent different skin tones!

Now gently squeeze each ball between a pair of the graham crackers. Melt the chocolate chips (either in a microwave in 30 second increments or in a double boiler). Transfer to a piping or ziploc bag, cut off the tip (as small as you can manage) and pipe some nice zigzaggy flourishes on top of each sandwich. Finally, complete each mammary with its own M&M nipple, using shades of pink and tan and brown as you please.

So if you find yourself at a cancer research fundraising event in the future, consider bringing these treats along - they were a huge hit at the original F*ck Cancer party! Share this post as liberally as you like. And please tag @fanfarethemecatering (Insta)/ @Culinerdy (Twitter) in your photos.

Finally, get your Mammos. May we all live long and prosper.

Anne Tegtmeier