Chocolate and Sugar showpieces

So, for the last 5 weeks I have been learning all about showpieces!  This was by far my most difficult class, partly because taste doesn't matter at all!!  No one eats a showpiece, it is purely for a dramatic statement.  Pastry chefs will spend their careers perfecting showpiece skills for the many worldwide competitions that take place.  You have to understand about chocolate and sugar, be artistic with creating a piece and make sure it doesn't fall over!  I basically completed one piece each week, so here are the pictures...

Here are some decoration pieces that are going on my first piece.  They look like they are filled chocolates, but are hollow shells glued together.

Here is the base with a large white chocolate ball in the middle.  Can anyone tell what it might be??

We did a lot of spraying in this class.  It really changes a look of a piece.  So I added some beams and painted my "ball" yellow and orange.  Now, it's the sun!

Then, I added my hollow balls, which represent planets, and a rocket ship on top.  This is the solar system.  

Week 2 I chose an underwater theme.  I have a balloon that I will dip in chocolate and make a fish.

 Here is my base-chocolate that looks like coral!  I thought this technique was really cool.  Then, I sprayed it with green and blue cocoa butter.

I have my two fish on the right that have been dipped and sprayed.  In the background, another type of corral that I painted pink.

My finished piece.  My balloon fish didn't work, so I made a jellyfish out of chocolate instead.

Week 3 I started this more abstract piece.  This base curve did break into three piece at one point, but now you can't even tell!

Second curved piece added.  No falling-yay!!

 This is a piece of thick plastic that I painted with green and yellow cocoa butter.  I then poured chocolate on top in a thin layer and cut squares...

Then, I glued the squares to by cube base.

Another big part of showpieces are flowers.  There are many techniques to make them.  Here is one of mine...  I still need to paint this and put it on my piece.  We have a big even in a few weeks and my instructor wants this one out for display, so I need to make sure it looks perfect!!

Week 4 we took a break from chocolate to make a sugar showpiece.  Sugar is a little more dangerous since it is over 300 degrees when you work with it!  We learned some really cool techniques, including my favorite: blown sugar!  Here is the tool you use to blow sugar into various shapes.  It reminds me of glass blowing...

To make a perfect sphere is not easy... this is probably my best one.  I definitely had some explosions before getting it right!

 Here is a flower my partner and I made by pulling hot sugar into petal shapes and gluing them on the center.  Notice we have at least 2 layers of gloves on!!

Here's how the piece turned out.  We added our flower, a couple of blown sugar balls and some pulled sugar ribbons.

Now, for final exam week.  We picked a variety of themes and then had to draw from a pile.  My theme: African safari.  I narrowed down many ideas and this is how it turned out!

Here are some components of my piece.  On the left the tubes are going to be elephant tusks.  On the right I have some base pieces.

Here are some petals for a flower and the large gray piece is my elephant trunk.

This is how it turned out.  This picture makes it look pretty good, but overall, I didn't really like it.  The main critique from my instructor was it was too flat.  This is also something I am going to work on before our big event, so hopefully I will have some new and improved pictures soon!

After the class was over I took a little vacation to visit my sister and nephew.  We had a great weekend visiting family and hanging out.  He is 5 months old now-I can't believe it!!

I will have more pictures in a few weeks of the Cheers and Chocolate event.  I am excited because I have some family coming to visit and attend!!  I am done with classes for the quarter, so plan on spending some time studying for Knowledge Bowl (of course!!) and getting organized for my next classes.  Stay warm out there!!