Goooo Riders!

Subtitle: Shanna is Exhausted

Well, I've spent the last two weeks working on my sugar showpiece. We had a choice for our showpiece to do either chocolate, sugar, fondant, or a combination. My big draw for sugar was that this was really our only opportunity to make something with sugar - it's not something you do a lot of in day to day work. So my showpiece ended up being a mixture of sugar and fondant. My goal was to finish it before March break. I had a few reasons. One, I'm a keener lately. Two, I wanted help from the chefs. Our showpiece is due only 2 weeks after we get back from March break, so I knew that after the break, people would be in a mad rush to finish and would be demanding the chefs' time. So, to help ease that rush and to help myself, I wanted to work on it early so they had time to help me. Third, we only have 2 sugar boxes - these are used when doing pulled and blown sugar. I knew lots of people wanted to do sugar showpieces, so those boxes would be in demand. Once again, I wanted to beat the rush. And finally, I just wanted to be able to sleep through March break without feeling guilty like I should be working on something.

I'm estimating that this showpiece took me 25-30 hours. I could definitely do it in less if I did it again, as I know where all the problems come up and I've now figured out how to solve them. The base is a poured sugar football field. I made one and it was perfect EXCEPT the sugar started to crystallize. Bad news. I piped the lines on the sugar base with royal icing - this sped up the crystallization. I ended up pouring it 3 times, but went with the first one. I decided to take my lumps mark-wise with the crystallization, knowing that it was the only thing wrong with that first one. The other two I poured had multiple issues that would have caused me to lose many more marks. Also, at the point where I was pouring the 2nd and 3rd ones, everything else was done with my showpiece and I just had to put it together. I had also been working on it for 2 weeks and was really exhausted from the 12 hours days and the walking to and from school. And I was just getting sick of working on this one project - it was getting frustrating. So, after staring at all the bases I had, I made the decision to go with my original base.

(Random Edit: Forgot to point out that the crystallization can be seen in the picture as the light green "splotches." But of course this just means that a game just ended and those are the scuffs on the field from all the tackles.)

I made the uprights for it out of pulled sugar. It wasn't ideal, but it was the one thing about the showepiece where I wasn't 100% sure about what material to use to make it. So, those were a bit disappointing to me, but that's ok.

The football was made out of blown sugar which is similar to blowing glass, but much safer, haha. In the end, the football was the easiest and quickest thing I did, which was VERY surprising. I got it right on about my 5th try with blowing sugar. It was a surprisingly difficult shape to achieve. The lines on the football were made with fondant. After 2 days of it being on the football, the colour from the sugar was bleeding into the fondant.

The logo was made out of fondant. I've been talking about that, but I suppose I should explain what it is for those who don't know. Fondant is a type of icing that has the consistency of playdoh, so it's used for modelling. That's what I used for my wedding cake - it's the big thing now for cakes as you can do just about anything with it. It's very, very sweet though. So yeah, made the logo out of fondant. This was potentially the most frustrating thing I did. I had to make it 4 times before I got it right. Although once I got it right Jamie (a classmate of mine from Moose Jaw and a HUGE Riders fan) saluted it, so I knew I was good to go with it. I spent at least 8 hours on this alone.

Then I just had to assemble it all. If I were to do it all over again, the biggest change I would make would be to do it all in 1 day or 2 at the most. Most of the problems I ran into were due to the fact that the sugar was sitting around and started doing wonky stuff. Another change I would make would be to use Isomalt for the base as it doesn't crystallize. I didn't use it here b/c the chefs didn't want us to use it - I'm guessing b/c the point is to learn how to make the sugar using normal sugar. But if you want a true "showpiece" that lasts a long time, then isomalt is the way to go.

I presented it today and I was really nervous. I got really upset when my wedding cake got picked to pieces by the chef b/c I had been really happy with it. And today I'm just VERY exhausted - I've been walking to and from school which takes a lot of energy and I've also been spending a lot of 12 hour days at school working on this showpiece. So I was in one of those tired "If you say one bad thing, I'm crying" moods. So yeah, nervous. Also, the entire time I was working on my showpiece, I was getting compliments from the chefs, so if they had done that and then turned around and when marking time came told me how bad my showpiece was, I would have been upset. So, I sat down with the Chef and I pointed out all the problems I saw. Many of them he told me are just things that are there that can't be fixed and "That's why you make them face the back." In the end, he really said not a single bad thing about it! He did say that it truly looked like a "showpiece." As in, if the President of the Riders came to me and asked me to make a showpiece, it's exactly the type of thing you'd give them. It's also something that could easily be made into a cake.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, I'm really pleased with the mark I got (He bumped me up even higher than what I gave myself!!), I'm exhausted, and I feel like I've just emerged back into life. I can now sleep like a normal person again and stop spending my waking hours at school only to go home, sleep, and return to school to do the same thing all over again.