Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Pastry Sugarwork Exam Entries

Standing on your feet for 5hrs straight, sweating and puffing, faced with a heater lamp, and even hotter melted sugar on your hands is no joke! And we have to do it twice!

Yesterday, we had a trial run. To discover where we were slow at, what could be improved, what worked, and what didn't.

This was my trial entry:













I didn't do any planning, I just made a lot of decorations and piece them up when time came. Chef didn't really like it. Although my handiwork was good, there were too many colors. Should keep to 2-3 colors, or even shades of 1-2 colors to make it more soothing to the eye. (Unlike chocolate where OTT seems to rule.) Important to give flow and movement to the showpiece. Many of the other students' were quite disastrous. 1 collapse (she didn't cook the sugar to the right temperature, and it started warping and breaking as she was piecing it up.) One was stuck on the marble table when she left it a little too long, and had to scrape it off with a paint scrapper.

Anyway, today, I think all of us improved tremendously!










There are 9 of us in our class SP1. 1 student threw her entry into the bin after grading. I didn't think it was so bad. There are another about 10, I think, in the other class SP2, but they took their exams on a different day, so I couldn't capture their entries here.

These 2 warrant special mention. Chef said they were excellent. I think so too!













And mine, and 2 others were very good. This was my entry.













I chose a color theme of green, white, and orange... come to think, it's very Irish!
I made a rough sketch in the morning, something softer, elegant, with clean lines, fit for a spring wedding. With various poured, pulled, blown sugar pieces. In time, maybe I can work in Murano.... fat hope!

I'm glad this is over now! No more sugarwork!!!! Well, maybe just a little more... I'm making some 'corals', and some caramel to dip my cherries for my cake entry on Thursday.

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