I’m a Sugar Artist! (not really)

But I did recently take a continuing education class in pulled sugar artistry at Lake Washington Technical College with my friend Kim. It was a nice, small class – just the two of us and one other woman, Susanne – with lots of hands-on work and attention from Chef Chris Malham.

When I say “sugar” I usually am referring to syrup made of dissolved isomalt, a sugar substitute that handles better for artistic applications. One factor that makes it especially attractive for artistry, I learned, is that it resists caramelization so it doesn’t pick up any golden color that you don’t want your piece to be tainted by.

On the first night, one of the things we learned was how to pull and shape flower petals, and attach them to create a flower. The goal was to make a rose, but mine had other ideas and came out more like a magnolia:

During the second and third nights, we worked on creating a sculpture of a clown. This involved

• blowing sugar to create the hollow limbs, torso and head
• making sugar ribbons for the cuffs and neck ruffle
• freehand sculpting the hat, hands, feet, accessories, etc
• making rope sugar and coiling it for the sculpture base
• creating a straw sugar stump for the clown to sit on
• making net sugar to decorate the base
• joining the various pieces

Chef Chris made the stump, hat, and a few of my clown’s limbs, but I did eventually get enough of the hang of the blown sugar to finish it off. Everyone’s clown was holding a different accessory of our choice – Kim’s held a beach ball, Susanne’s had a balloon, and naturally, I gave mine a lollipop to hold!

Of course, this stuff’s pretty fragile and has a short shelf life out in the open, because sugar’s constantly trying to slurp moisture out of the air. Thus, it’s best not to get too emotionally attached :-) The clown’s already history. The flower is holding up ok.

clown photos by Kim of Pepo Park