Sugar flowers and chocolate demos

Cake Connection (CC) had two demos as part of its first anniversary celebrations. The first was on sugar flowers and the other on chocolate making.

I love the beautiful flowers at CC and this demo was conducted by the lady (sorry, I forget her name) and her team who makes those flowers. If you want to make flowers, you must have patience and time. And that I do not have.


Patience is needed to mould, tint and colour every tiny detail of a flower. And time to dry each petal and leaf. By the end of the demo, I learned how to make the flowers, bunch them together and place them on a cake. But what I learned more is to appreciate the effort and work put in by the people who make those lovely flowers.

Let me tell you this .... if you think sugarpaste flowers are expensive, they are not. The price is worth every bit of effort that you are not putting in to make those flowers. :)

If you are a chocoholic, then the second demo would have been perfect for you. The chocolate making demo was conducted by Jay Wong of Baker's Choice.

Jay explained the difference between couverture and compound chocolate. He showed us how to melt and mould chocolate. We learned how to make the filling for the chocolate. Jay localised the flavour by creating a durian filling. Everyone got to take back four pieces of chocolates. I loved the durian filling. It was yummy! (I love anything durian!)

Jay also showed us how to make chocolate curls on transfer sheets. As I had to leave early, I am not sure if I missed anything else. But what I do know is Jay and CC had a very good offer package for all participants of the demo. The offer was only for that day!

The Art of Sugar Work

Learning from a French chef has been on my wish list for sometime now. Last week, this became a reality when I attended a three day course on The Art of Sugar Work at The French Culinary School in Asia.

The course was conducted by Master Pastry Chef Jean-Francois Arnaud.

I decided to explore sugar work to find out if I can incorporate the sugar techniques into cake decorating. The possibility is endless. All you need is a creative mind and the rest is history.

We learned how to make lollies, Berlingot, jewelleries, assemble a showpiece (just like the ones at a buffet table at hotels) and shape sugar into figurines. We also learned how to cast sugar and blow sugar.

One of the many lollies:
These are the jewelleries that I made during the class. Sugar moulded into beads:

The end result:

If you are planning to take up this course, be prepared to burn your fingers ... even after wearing a double layer of gloves. You will be working with hot sugar under a very hot lamp.

Learning the right temperature to work with sugar is essential and you have to work fast before the sugar hardens. It's all about what works for you when moulding sugar.

I loved watching Jean-Francois create his masterpieces. He works fast, calm at the same time and so graceful. One of my friends who attended this course said that seeing Jean-Francois is like watching ballet. I truly agree.

Two showpieces by the master chef:

I enjoyed this course very much despite burning my fingers. It's worth every sen. Some of the pictures used here are courtesy of The French Culinary School in Asia.

My showpiece:

Chocolatey fun

Recently, I attended a whole day chocolate-making workshop. The workshop was an eye-opener for me and it was worth the money spent.

We were given different types of chocolate to taste. And for those of you who thought chocolate is just chocolate, think again.

Chef Steven showed us techniques on how to temper and mould chocolates, pralines and truffles.

Eating chocolates is the easy part. Making them... that's a different ball game altogether. But the end result makes it worth the effort.

Personalise your chocolates: Decide the shape, designs, the kind of fillings you wanna have... ganache, hazelnuts, rum and raisins, perhaps? Using quality couverture, gets you great tasting chocolates. YUmm!!! If you get shiny chocolates, it means that the chocolate was tempered at the right temperature.

All in all, I really enjoyed this informative workshop!

Here are the chocolates and truffles I made during the workshop: