So This Is Christmas

Merry Christmas is such an infectious feeling I like to feel that way all year around.

So if you are visiting just before Christmas, just after Christmas or even here on Christmas day I am sure you will find something of interest for you and in the spirit of Christmas.

It may be said that Christmas is no longer a celebration but this must be spoken by people that have never had trouble closing their eyes on Christmas Eve in an expectation of what maybe left for them on the carpet under the tree.

I continue to look forward to the surprise on my Grandchild's faces to this day at Christmas events.

Merry Christmas - Merry Christmas - Merry Christmas

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Gumpaste flowers over 200 years old

By Joyce Freeman


If you think the sensational sugar flowers you see covering modern celebration cakes are a relatively new invention then you'll be shocked to discover that they've been around for a long time.

Making gum paste flowers has an extensive history

In fact , sugar craft has a lengthy record, though there doesn't seem to be any record of when it really started , however , there are still copies of books by the 17th Century cookery and household management author, John Murrell, in which he teaches his followers on the employment of sugar craft and the way to produce them. The centrepiece for a Seventeenth century royal banquet was frequently a sugar creation made from marzipan and pastillage, made of icing/confectioners ' sugar combined with corn flour (corn starch) and gum.

Over the following 200 years its popularity faded until the middle of the Nineteenth century when the French started to supply elaborately decorated cakes and the art swiftly spread right across Europe.

New strategy

In America, in about 1929, a new method of cake decorating, based mainly on covering cakes with cream or frosting, was developed by a company called Wilton Enterprises. Initially they ran classes for pro bakers, but in 1947 they began to produce a range of bake-ware and cake decorations that enabled everybody to produce their own decorated cakes.

Fragile

Then, in England, in the early 1980's wedding and celebration cakes started to appear, not iced with the conventional hard royal topping, but covered with softer, rolled fondant icing and embellished with fragile gumpaste flowers.

Preferred technique

These new sorts of decorations were soon adopted by nations such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, whose practice of cake decorating was in royal icing but due to the environment, set as hard as rock and made slicing the cake almost impossible. The softer fondant icing suited the climate much better so it swiftly became the most preferred method of decorating a cake.

Folk who saw these gum paste flowers wanted to discover how to make these wonderful creations and especially wanted to understand how to make them for the cakes that they made.

Everyone loves them

The utilisation of these flowers has additionally been gaining in popularity in The USA and Canada during the last 10 years and, recently, 1 or 2 TV shows have boosted its recognition.




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