Sugah

after days of eating and eating and eating and eating plated desserts, i thought i'd never want to eat sweets again. then we started making sugar things that aren't really any good for eating (even though a little chunk of marzipan is delicious). i would have done anything for a snack by the end of the day.


we each made a set of marzipan fruits then each team painted all of one kind of fruit with the airbrush. i love the airbrush, and i wanted to airbrush all day.



i painted the peas.




and the pumpkins.



these are my fruits. and vegetables.



we made nougatine baskets. nougatine is caramel with almonds folded in. it is hot and a little burn-y. but cute, right?



i like making marzipan fruit. my only problem with it is one of scale. why is the pineapple the same size as the fig? why is the pea pod longer than the slice of watermelon?


it is still really cute though.



oh, and the black stems in the apple, pear, and pumpkin are cloves.



you know what wasn't so cute? when, later that night, i thought, "hey! this is weird! do i have a sinus infection?! i don't feel sick." i guess i just inhaled a lot of green airbrush color. . . .






chef ron ben-israel came to teach two classes on sugar paste flowers. he is so good at what he does that his website is weddingcakes.com . these are his sugar roses:




really pretty. i'd seen him do it a few times before, but this was my first time actually trying it. these are mine:



not bad, even though the color looks a little tie-dyed. i really like the leaves.



we also made calla lilies.




and a stripey tulip.






our next big project was to make a pastillage cake stand. pastillage is made with sugar and gelatin and reportedly tastes like candy cigarettes. the stand had to hold a cake off the table 10 inches and have 4 favor boxes. and the cake had to be covered in rolled fondant.



oh, and our theme had to start with the letters of our names. so i had to do something that started with B or G. (or E, i guess, technically. my school jacket says elizabeth.) a few of us had a little too much fun coming up with themes that used both initials (or 3 initials for some people). we came up with themes like green and yellow tiger, international drug lord, and bowling gorilla (that's me). jason even used one of them: jungle siesta. i finally decided to do a Gaudi theme, which also works because it is also Barcelona themed.


this is a favor box.


this wall is made out of sugar paste, not pastillage, because i wanted it curved. and it has some of the sugar paste flowers that we made with chef ron on it. it is supposed to look like the desert hills around the city.




this is the whole thing with the skyline of the sagrada familia on top.


plain pastillage is white, but i colored mine to be a more natural, desert color. parts of the project were airbrushed, and others were painted with a brush.



this is a favor box with a cross.




this wall is based on a gaudi palace.



and the wall on the right looks like some of the gaudi apartments in barcelona. it has a little balcony.


the base of the stand and the base that holds the cake are painted and inspired by the sidewalks in barcelona.



i liked all the negative space in the piece. it made it fun to explore. i cut a template and used it to paint the mosaic parts.




this is supposed to look a little like something from park guell. it is also made of sugar paste. i made (ghetto) forms out of cardboard and plastic wrap so that these pieces would have the right curve to look how i wanted and to fit on the base.





the tree-ish-looking side is supposed to look like some of the tree columns from the sagrada familia.



the cake stand had to have a cake. it was fun to make a cake because i was so hungry for sweets and kept sneaking buttercream. i covered the cake with a sky-colored fondant. i originally stuck some flowers on it to cover chunks of crystallized sugar in the fondant (it was commercially made), but i really liked the way it looked.






i was scared to put my cake on the stand at first, but then we began to discover how strong pastillage really can be. we were going to have to throw our projects away anyway, so we did some experimenting.


we tried picking it up by different spots that looked weak, like windows or the balcony. it didn't break, but sometimes the royal icing that was holding it together didn't hold because it wasn't all the way dry.

this is jason holding my whole project (minus cake) by the tiny balcony.


we eventually made it end up like this. it was a little sad, but mostly fun.



later we decided to test how strong pastillage really is. we took my favor boxes outside and stood on them. it turns out the breaking point is somewhere between me and jason.