...we all knew this day was coming, friends, I am writing to you tonight with blistered hands and bandaged fingers. I know that this hardly seems like a pleasant experience, but I am just having the best time with poured and pulled sugar.
Monday morning started my module on sugar. Bright and early (and a little jet-lagged) I dressed out in my full uniform and I headed to my first superior class. I walk into class and met all my new classmates, but there was little time for chit-chat...we hit the ground running!
Our tasks for the day were to make a pulled sugar rose and to make our first sugar sculpture. The pulled sugar rose process is basically where you boil sugar and water to 329 F pour and work the liquid similarly to how you would kneed bread, well except for the fact that it is so freaking hot you almost have to laugh to get through it....or yell profanities. Then the process is similar to how salt water taffy is made; I pull the sugar and fold it, pull, fold, pull, fold, ect. The result is that the sugar gains a silver tone and looks like glass because of the air that has been incorporated. Then the sugar is kept hot under a hot suspended iron. Really the worst part is not touching the hot sugar, but it is having to work under the hot iron...my hands will never look the same again. When the sugar hardens, which is almost instant once you take it of the heat, the sugar turns into a very delicate glass like substance and the result is in a word, stunning! I can just imagine a bunch of these flowers gently cascading down and around the side of a wedding cake. Each one of these little roses would be sold for about $12-14 dollars. Sound outrageous? Well take into consideration that we have to pay for burn cream and antiseptic somehow.
Our sugar sculptures came next. The basic process of this is boiling sugar and water together and pouring it while still hot and then shaping it however you want. The tricky part, besides the heat factor, is that you have one pot of sugar, thus you have to very carefully graduate your colors. I started with yellow, then added a little red to make orange, then onto a deeper red, and finally swirled in some gold luster dust to the last portion of my boiled sugar. Organization for this is absolutely imperative, other wise you will end up with a very unfortunate grey or brown color very early on in your work.
Tuesday our tasks for the day: sugar sculpture, sugar rose, pulled sugar ribbon in 5 hours. With some tweaking to my original sugar sculpture from day one, I don't like it at all!...however my chefs loved it...SO looks like this is going to be my general design, although there are a few techniques on my show piece that most definitely need practice. On my final exam I will have to display my chocolate truffles and petit fours on the "shelves" I have incorporated into the piece.
Tuesday also brings to all of us a new fear...the sound of crumbling and cracking sugar. While I have been fortunate to not have any of my pieces break, just about every 10-20 minutes you hear a "crack, crash, 'oh *$%!'" and shards of sugar go all over the counter and floor. We pick up the salvageable pieces for our distressed classmate and either try to piece it together or have another go at it.
We moved onto our roses and I do think that the one from today looks more life-like than from day one...minor victory!
Finally it was time for our pulled sugar ribbon. We only had 30 minutes left and Nicole and I started pulling our colored sugar ribbon across the width of the kitchen. Trying to keep the sugar even, shiny and pliable under the tiny heat iron all the while warming up our knife with a blowtorch to cut the huge and very breakable sugar ribbon into smaller strips to form the loops. We all felt like we were on one of those sugar competitions on the Food Network racing against the clock with sugar shards flying all over the place. New respect for sugar artists...mad props, I bow at your feet!
This is super impressive...
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