Tell you what, I miss going to class!! I ACTUALLY miss LCB. oh boy oh boy…

Rose (made by the chef lecturer)

Anyways, remember long long time ago (say a couple of weeks) when I was still a LCB student *haha*, I did this sugar art in class and it was fun despite burning fingers and sweaty arms (and legs, mind you). I guess Sugar Art and Chocolate Showpieces are more for the professional who do competitions and earn/gain/win awards, medals and stuff. You can hardly see this kinda sugar showpieces hanging around in M’sia. I mean, if there IS, … I’d run there and have a look right away! The reason why no one really does this is 1, no skill and knowledge of it?, no 2, people do not appreciate, no 3, Isomalt is the preferred type of sugar because it prolongs the life of the showpiece, but Isomalt is 10x price of sugar.

*photobucket is really really taking on my nerves*

‘preserving’ temperature or boiled sugar under heat lamp *which is bloody effing hot I tell u.. even with gloves, I had 2 swollen index fingers after say … 3-4 hours? 

I would say that sugar art is relatively, if not.. 100 times harder than fondant / marzipan modelling .. and say about 10x harder than making a chocolate showpiece. Temperature plays a dominant role in both chocolate and sugar showpiece, if it’s too cold, it hardens and you can’t do anything unless you rewarm it. If it’s too warm, it’s hard to handle and you can’t do anything with it! If you manipulate it at the wrong temperature, basically u’re just wasting your time. So catching the temperature for these two is something one has to learn!

AND! if it breaks, it shatters like glass! and you get an echo of “ooooooooo” from the students

Er, my virgin sugar piece. Haha I know it’s bad. like, nothing incompared to the chef’s.

There’s a few ways to manipulate the boiled sugar; casting (pouring into a mould), blowing (obviously, with a pump), pulling / shaping (making objects like flowers, ribbons..) and more.. Casting would probably be the easiest as there’s no handling of the HOT HOT stuff (150-160 C) so, no risks of burning hand. As for the rest of methods, practise practise practise!!!

Ribbon (made by chef lec again) Because mine looked fugly and thick

Outta shape fat swan 0.o” (yes, I did it)

But nevertheless, it was something very new to me and I’m glad I finally got on hold of it towards the end. I might do some for fun here (in M’sia) but, I need a Silpat or something similar.

to be continued…. 

PS: foodaholic is turning ONE soon. lets see if it reaches 200k visitors by 1st june..

PPS: I’m turning 22 soon too (on 22nd) !! omg! *faints*

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