Pastillage

Pastillage is a sugar based dough used for decorating and creating decorations for pastry, show piece work and decorative molded forms. Made with icing sugar, gelatine, water, and vinegar. The dough is much like clay which makes it easy to shape by hand.

In making the pastillage, you will need:

- 2 Medium sized cake board

- Rectangular plastic cutouts

- 1 Sharp Cutter

- Cardboard cutouts (Used to guide cutting the shapes out of pastillage)

Pastillage

1kg Icing Sugar 

10gm Gelatine 

50ml Water

50ml Vinegar

First, sift the icing sugar. Then in a small bowl, dissolve the gelatine with water until the gelatine forms a jelly-like finish. After that use double boiler to melt the gelatine until it turns back to liquid form. Mix the icing sugar, gelatine and vinegar together. 

If the mixture seems dry, carefully add several drop of vinegar and knead well. Wrap and allow the dough to rest for at least 30 minutes. Roll the resulting dough into small portions of the pastillage using a rolling pin and cornstarch as a non stick compound. 

Shape it as you may, then place the pastillage pieces on a sheet of plastic cutouts and leave them to dry.

At this stage, you will need:

- Piping bag

- Icing spatula

- Mixer

Royal Icing
2nos Egg White

350g Icing Sugar

To glue the pastillage together, use royal icing as a form of adhesive. In the mixer mix egg white and icing sugar together until they form hard peak which is a sign that it should be ready for usage. It is usually used as a form of adhesive to stick each piece in place as well as its potential for usage in making decorations which shows texture, form or even height! 

After you have shaped the royal icing into the desired pattern as well as attached the pieces together, leave it to dry on a warm surface preferably higher than room temperature but not too hot as it will melt the royal icing as well as the surface it forms. 

Lastly, when it is all nicely dried, decorate the pastillage piece with colors or any form of decoration you may want it to end up with and there you go! 

It's That Easy!

Chocolate Work

Two weeks before our class end, our lecture give us a task to make a small box using dark chocolate.  

Chocolate Box

In this part, you will need:

- a Sharp knife

- chopping board

- Baking pan

- Mixing bowl

- Spatula

- Paper cutter

- Cardboard cutout

- Sauce pot 

First, Chop up the chocolate bar into uniformed smaller pieces in order to avoid having incidents of burnt chocolate.

Melt the dark chocolate with double boiler. Stirring until the chocolate has fully melted. After melting the chocolate do the base and the body for chocolate box. Refrigerate for 15 minutes or let it rest in chocolate room. 

 When that is done, pour the liquid solution onto a baking pan with a layer of baking paper covering the surface bellow the chocolate to ease the process of taking it off the pan. Wait for it to turn solid.

Use the cardboard cutout to mark the shape that needs to be cut out of the chocolate. When it is all cut out in shapes, use some liquid chocolate to attach the pieces into place by piping up the chocolate into the cavity that needs to be filled in the structure while scrapping off any excess to avoid having a messy product.

Plastic Chocolate/ Modelling Chocolate

Modelling chocolate as the name might suggest is used to make or shape decorations that might be impossible to make just by melting and cooling the everyday chocolate. It creates a platform to extend the range of decorations we are able to make. 

 In case it wasn't clear, the recipe is as follows: 

500gm Dark Chocolate

175gm Liquid Glucose

100ml Heavy syrup

Heavy Syrup

1kg Sugar

300ml Water

Here is the recipe to make the chocolate for garnish on the top of the box know as a modelling chocolate or plastic chocolates. Using mixer mix the dark chocolate, liquid glucose, and heavy syrup together. Let it rest about 15 minutes in chocolate room before doing the rose flower.

Glue the base and the body of the box with more melted chocolate. After that glue the modelling chocolate on the top of the box as a garnishing.

Bread Show Piece

In our next lesson, the lecture introduce us with bread show piece. Show piece is made entirely of dead dough, the ingredients is flour, salt and water. The flour equal with salt. Mix it together. Let it rest for 30 minutes to 1 hour in room temperature. While waiting for the dough will be rest, design a sculpture to make the bread show pieces. Our design is related to movie stuff. 

Hexagon shape for the base. 

The main sculpture of our design.

Baked until they turn golden brown. 

This is our design for windmill bread show piece. 

Used a caramelized sugar to glue the windmill. 

To make the model looks shinning, apply varnish to your windmill model.

Our windmill model and movie role play sculpture.

Butter Sculpture (Fish)

On the second week of Pastry Artistry class, we had to do butter sculpture using Styrofoam. Our lecture sketch the fish with the coral on the whiteboard. 

Before begin to carve, we draw out the picture using marker pen to make the outline of the image on the Styrofoam. 

First cut the large chunks of the Styrofoam off to get the image. Use a sharp cutter and slowly cut the image out of the foam.

Trim the Styrofoam until you get the image of the fish with the coral.

To get the smoothness surfaces, use the rough sandpaper before butter is applied.

In room temperature using pastry margarine applied it on your fish sculpture. 

After all the surface has being applied with the butter. Let it rest before you make the fish scales.

Make a small ball of butter then using your hand make a fish scale then apply it onto the fish. 

Backside of the fish also need to make the fish scale.

Here is our butter sculpture. It took about 4 hour to make the fish scale.

Styrofoam Carving (Swan)

On a first week of Pastry Artistry class, we were required to have our own cutters and marker pen. Our first week task is carve a swan.

Draw the swan image on the block with a marker pen, after that cut the outline of the image.

Carve the detail of beak and wings. Then trim and alter the outline image until reach the image of swan. 

Make an outline of the wings. Then cut the outline. It's make a swan look like a life swan.

To get the smooth surface, use the sand paper on the rounded edges.

This is our Styrofoam swan.