Mom, Look What I Made at School Today!

Hurray! It is the unveiling of the PASTILLAGE SHOWPIECE!

But not yet, first I must show you all my progress ;) I know, I know, you’re so excited!

Lots of pictures!
Okay, remember? This is kind of the look we’re going for (but our bases don’t have the cool cut out on the side…the molds hadn’t come in yet. So sad):

Here is my station, getting all ready to work
I had all my pieces ready, my pressed sugar base, and my sugar ‘glue’ :) I started off by putting on the triangles. However, this was the first crisis. Oh yeah, we had crises. Not too many though, surprisingly. I had my best looking triangles on, and was getting ready to place a stem, when my triangles FELL to the table and SHATTERED! !!! Pastillage is really brittle when it dries, so it totally sounds like glass breaking. There was total silence in the kitchen today except for the crashes of broken pieces…and the occasional swearing at the showpiece. But not from me, I promise :) So after the first mishap with the triangles, I decided to take pictures of as many steps as possible…mainly to prove to you all that I DID IT. :) So, second-best-looking triangles!

So, next came some stems

Crisis number two: I was placing a 3rd stem, when something startled me, I jumped, and consequently knocked off the two placed stems and they FELL and SHATTERED! !!!! But you’ll notice on the board behind the piece that I had lots of extra pieces…that definitely helped me manage my stress…Now for the succession of leaves…amazingly, that was the end of the crises…it was quite a relief…it took a lot of concentration and a steady hand to keep these in place until the glue dried (it only took minutes for it to dry, but you had to support the piece there the whole time – if you didn’t wait long enough, it would FALL and SHATTER! !!!!)

I got the remaining stems and pebbles on,
  
And THEN – the flower. That was almost as stressful as getting started…I REALLY didn’t want to break everything and the flower was a substantial piece…I was worried it would fall! But it went on without a hitch and then I was DONE!
                           
I’m not gonna lie, it took me TWO HOURS to put this bad boy together. And it was a lot harder that my Chef Instructor made it look (but of course, right?) I initially didn’t like the way I had placed my bottom two stems, but the more I looked at it, the more I thought “MAN this is really cool! I can’t believe I’ve actually put this together after only a WEEK of training!” How awesome is that?!

After more of us we’re done, we started getting creative with our photography and used black sheet pans as our background. So, for your viewing pleasure…
And yes, technically, it is all edible, but to be honest, I wouldn’t really eat it if I were you… ;)

And no, I didn’t bring it home. Would you believe it? It went into the trash. It would never have survived the trip home. I kept the flower though…and got interesting looks on the train. That was fun. :) But you better believe I’ll be bringing my first chocolate sculpture home!!!!! (but that’s not for another couple of weeks…)

And that is my first big accomplishment!! Thanks for keeping up with my adventures!!!!!!!!!!!!!!