Sugarland

The last two weeks have been all sugar, all the time.

I've been hard at work on my pulled sugar rose, and it's really encouraging since it feels like there's definite improvement the more I work with it. Thankfully, we had ample time to practice before our assessment at the end of the sugar module.

The actual assessment was pretty low key, and we had loads of time to form a rose and three leaves. Most people had enough time to make more than one. I made two, and I hemmed and hawed a bit about which one to present, but I think I chose the right one.

My very first sugar rose (over cooked due to wonky thermometer, hence the yellow colour):

My final rose for the assessment:

I didn't have long to relax as our centrepiece assessment was the following day. Luckily for me, we had another practice session after my first disaster, and I was pretty pleased with what I managed to produce. 

I tweaked a few things in my plan for my piece for the assessment, but of course things didn't go according to plan. My arm caught on my large background piece, and the thing fell over and smashed to bits. I rescued what I could, and I had to rethink how I was going to put all the pieces together. Fortunately, I managed to cobble something together that wasn't horrifying and showed six different techniques of poured sugar.

The small blue piece on the right is the salvaged piece, and I was a bit sad since it was my favourite. It had swirls of blue, violet, and green, with a clear piece on top to mimic a foaming wave. Sad.

In any case, I'm glad that the assessments are done, and now I could play with sugar at home! One of the chefs managed to finagle me an awesome deal on a proper sugar lamp, and now I've got one at home!

I still need a few more things, but I'm really excited to play around with things on my free time at home. Sugar is no joke, most of the kids in my class really, really hated it. It's very difficult and demanding work, and there's always the fear of something shattering beyond repair. However, the nice thing is that it does feel like you're improving the more you work with it and understand how it behaves. 

I'm eager to see if I could improve on my ribbon and blown sugar on my own time. We had some fun sessions where we just made some stuff that weren't going to be on the assessment.

My blown apple (it's hard to tell from the pic, but the thing turned out to be a monster!):

And I think I'll work some more on my ribbon. The one I did in class was just silly looking - word to the wise, it's better for just one person to pull sugar. Especially if the other person hates sugar work.