It seems as though the past two weeks have been a whirlwind. After finishing chocolate showpieces, my classmates and I jumped right into learning the techniques of sugar decoration and by the end of the week, built something that was altogether different from the chocolate version.
The elements and techniques we tackled in this particular showpiece included: pulling sugar into a “pearl” colored consistency then using it for petals and assembling flowers, making pastillage decorations and a pressed sugar dome for the base, making bubble sugar, and finally learning how to blow sugar into fruit and birds. The blowing of sugar was a lot like the techniques you would use to blow glass objects. To make a blown object you first take a small piece of the hot sugar mixture, mold it into a balloon shape then place it onto a copper tube attached to a hand pump. As you add in air you need to make sure to continuously shape and rotate the sugar to turn it into the form you want, then you finish the piece by cooling the object over a fan and then knocking the piece off with scissors. For my showpiece I made an apple, orange, and a bird.
The one thing I can tell you about sugar in comparison to chocolate is that it is A LOT cleaner, but also A LOT hotter! To construct these pieces we used a cooked sugar mixture that is cooked to 165C and worked with it under heat lamps. To protect our hands we wore duct tape on our fingertips and also covered our hands in two pairs of gloves.
This week has been exam week, the culmination of all three units: chocolate candy, chocolate showpiece, & sugar showpiece. The exams were an individual effort of everything we have learned in class so far. It started with a short written exam then proceeded with three days of practical evaluations. Wednesday was full of mostly making chocolate candies (Earl Grey Tea Ganache & Grand Marnier Caramels), casting all of the elements for our chocolate showpiece, and completing some items that we would need later for the sugar showpiece. On Thursday I completely assembled my chocolate showpiece and candies and then handed them in to be graded and today I pulled and blew sugar to assemble my sugar showpiece.
Let me tell you, by the end of today’s class and with exams finally over I have never been more emotionally and physically exhausted. There was a lot of organization and time management to plan out, moving around on my feet and setbacks that I had to get through (not to mention being the mopper at the end of the day), but I have never worked harder at anything before in my life and I’m really proud of myself. I feel happy with the work I put in and I’m excited to start our new unit on Monday, ice cream.
