Sugar Work Equipment

 
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Before I start showing any sugar work techniques, I want to give you an idea of what equipment I use and how I set it up. I don’t have every toy and gadget I’d like to, but what I do have is enough to play around with most of the techniques I’ve learned in the past.

Keep in mind that you don’t need all of this stuff to get started in the wonderful world of sugar! I’m planning on showing as many things as I can think of that require little or no specialized equipment besides a candy thermometer. Most of this equipment is only necessary for pulled and blown sugar. While those are sort of the main attractions of sugar work for many people, they aren’t the only thing you can do with it.


Sugar Work Equipment

Here is more or less how I’ve been setting my equipment up in this kitchen. Fortunately, I have a nice tall space in the center of our long counter where the side-by-side “vintage” oven and range used to be. (I don’t miss them at all!) Center stage is my sugar warming box. Mine is homemade by the chef I learned to do sugar from. Compare it to a commercially-produced version. Professional sugar equipment is expensive. For the most part, I recommend you make or improvise any of it that you can. Part of the fun of doing sugar or chocolate work is taking creative trips to the hardware store! I managed to find a blog post written by someone who made his own sugar warming box.

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Review: Pappardelle’s Pasta

 
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Here’s today’s central question: should the words “fruit-flavored” and “pasta” ever go together?

This is not a question I would have pondered without a concrete basis in real life, but I got to find out the answer anyway. A few weeks ago, Chris came home from work and presented me with two paper bags from the Pappardelle’s Pasta stall at Pike Place market. One contained lemon parsley mafaldine, which were wide, frilly noodles with flecks of bright green. Okay, sounds good, right? But the second bag I wasn’t so sure about. A fanciful fruit pasta blend sounded like just another weird food Chris was trying simply because it was a weird food.

He also brought home a recipe for a fruit salad using the noodles from the stall with him, and he was very keen to try both the pasta and the recipe. Every night he mentioned wanting to make it, so finally I rounded up all the ingredients for him one day and had them waiting when he got home.

Fruit-Flavored Noodles

The noodles were…surprising. I was shocked that I didn’t hate them. That’s not to say that they weren’t weird, but as far as fruit-flavored pasta goes, I’d imagine this wouldn’t rank half-badly. I was impressed that the colors stayed so vibrant after being cooked, proudly declaring whether they were lemon, lime, tangerine or raspberry flavored. The texture was good and robust, and I was charmed by the shape, which I thought looked like two separate noodles twisting into a close embrace. I kept coming back to try them again and again while Chris chopped up the fruit for the salad.

Fruit-Flavored Noodles

My expectations rose. Really, they weren’t half bad. I could see them working in a light fruit salad, and they certainly were striking. Chris added the celery (the recipe calls for way too little celery) and the fruit–apple, mandarin orange slices, and halved red and green grapes–and tossed it with the pasta, and it really looked quite pretty. Maybe I was actually going to like this stuff.

Fruit Salad with Fruit-Flavored Noodles

Unfortunately, it didn’t look quite so appetizing once the yogurt-based dressing showed up at the party. But it would still taste good…maybe?

Not so much. The flavor of the noodles seemed quite strident when we were eating them on their own, but it was completely masked by the fruit and the dressing. To make matters worse, the mandarin orange slices and the orange juice concentrate mixed in with the yogurt made the whole thing taste candy-sweet, artificial and harshly acidic. Chris and I both got through our portions for dinner that night, trying not to waste food, but the one and only bite I took from the bowl I served myself the next day brought the word “inedible” to mind. The best we could figure is that the company was trying to appeal to the church picnic crowd, not foodies, and came up with a recipe that would echo the fruit salads of yore.

Lemon-Parsley Noodles with Asparagus

We still had the lemon parsley noodles to try. I had much higher hopes for them. Chris blanched some gorgeous asparagus and made a sweet onion sauce to go on top. This time I was even more disappointed. The dish certainly wasn’t inedible–the asparagus and the sauce were both spot-on, so that helped–but there was something off about the lemon flavor in the pasta. Chris finally put a name to it when he pointed out that they were using lemon oil to flavor the pasta, which made it taste like lemon oil rather than fresh lemon, and that tone of lemon flavor actually worked much better with the fruit-flavored pasta.

In the end, I wouldn’t buy the lemon parsley stuff again, but I might give the fruit-flavored pasta another chance. Only this time with my own recipe. Fresh orange slices rather than canned mandarins would help, as would a much less overpowering dressing. The walnuts and light, crisp apples could make a repeat appearance, and I think we decided that the right goat cheese would counter the fruit flavors nicely. However, if I find myself wanting bright, flashy pasta, I think I’ll try out this wicked pasta dish Greg posted at Sippity Sup yesterday, where the beets in the dish turn the fusilli bright neon red.

Sugar Work (Pastry School Flashbacks)

 
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One of my goals for this year is to start practicing my neglected sugar work skills again. Last week’s cupcakes gave me the motivation to round up all of my equipment. Now that I have it located and dusted off, I’m hoping to relearn what I used to know and share the techniques here as I revisit them. In the meantime, I’ve been looking over my old notes and pictures to refresh my memory. Inspired by the post Hayley did at Hayley Bakes of her “vintage” cakes, I thought it would be fun to do something similar with my old pastry school photos, starting with the sugar stuff. (These photos were all taken with my old point and shoot digital camera, or even worse my digital video camera’s still photo function for the first few, so they look a little different from my usual!)

First, a comparison. This was the first showpiece I ever made:


Sugar Work - My First Showpiece

And this is the one I made nine months later for my graduation portfolio review and reception:


Sugar Work - Dolphin Showpiece

The sugar technique on my cupcakes last week, as cute as I think they turned out, falls slightly closer to the first showpiece than the last on my ability spectrum, so I have some ground to make up.

In my defense, that first showpiece was not designed by me in any way, shape, or form, but the execution was all me (except for the ribbons, which look pretty good but were made by the instructor). Maybe it was a good thing that I really didn’t like the design or the colors, because at the time it took my mind off of how frustrated I was that I couldn’t make the sugar do what I wanted it to.

This was back during my first quarter of pastry school. Our chef instructor for that term offered three-day showpiece workshops out of his home, and I was really excited to take the chocolate one. He was also offering a sugar work workshop. I wasn’t sure that I was that interested in it, but Chris and I decided that I shouldn’t miss the opportunity to learn the skill, so I signed up for both the sugar and chocolate classes.

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