Posted by Steve on December 11, 1997 at 10:14:54:
In Reply to: Re: Sugarcraft posted by Gerard on December 10, 1997 at 20:32:54:
: : There is an increasing amount of bad sugarcraft around these days, and I think it is vital that students be able to tell the difference.
: Steve , you obviously know your stuff, you're in the right place.
: People who aren't involved in the biz can't expect this site to be geared towards them unless they make it known, I like to help out beginers like everyone else...I was just glad someone else did. Personally I'm apalled by the prices charged for wedding cakes made from duncan hines cake mixes, a slight coat of buttercream (with zero butter) and rolled fondant.
: I don't care if I never see anothetr wedding cake...but I kinda promised my apprentice I'd teach him that stuff.
: Gerard
You and Jacques Torres have at least one thing in common--you both dislike wedding cakes. Come Friday night, the last thing Jacques wants to worry about is spending the time it takes to put a wedding cake together after prepping for his Le Cirque banquets, parties and restaurant service. I'm in the distinct minority--a pastry chef who loves doing them. Of course, I haven't spent 80 hours in the kitchen already that week...For me, wedding and other special occasion cakes are the ultimate expression of edible art. And I have spent years trying to raise the level of my sugarcraft work to an international standard--which is much, much higher than that in the US. When I got out of pastry school and heard that Eleanor Rielander and Betty van Norstrand had taught Albert Kumin sugarcraft--that was it--I knew I had to learn it too, just like I had to work to get better at chocolate and pulled sugar. It was just another artistic medium waiting to be explored. Which most pastry chefs don't attempt to do--too often there seems to be this division between pastry chefs and "cake decorators"--and in reality, both camps can learn from each other as long as both are willing to share. Separation based on fear, elitism and pretension have no place in baking, or for that matter, in society at large. This is one of the directions my teaching and work seem to be taking me--helping to unify these seemingly disparate groups--"cake decorators" cannot sacrifice taste at the expense of appearance and need to spend way more time developing their taste, palate, and pastry and baking skills. Convoluted, over-elaborate designs and inedible ornamental edifices have to be criticized IF the taste of the cake is compromised as a result. But chefs need to give decorators a break, too--after all, it's OK to use inedible support in most pastry competitions (ACF is, of course, the exception) pull wires through sugar to support pulled sugar flowers and baskets, it's now OK in France to use a hot glue gun to assemble pastillage work instead of royal, there are even books--in French--showing chefs from the LeNotre school using cake decorating tools like cutters and modelling tools! Like this is new--Australian and South African sugarcraft artists like Eleanor Rielander and Patricia Simmons have been using them for well over 20 years!
It's our collective responsibility to raise awareness--for decorators, chefs, interested amateurs and especially the customer. And with this level of awareness may come pricing and compensation truly in line with quality and effort. Otherwise, our art and craft--whether it be baking, pastry, or cake artistry--will not survive.