We’ve outlined all the ingredients and directions for you to make the perfect Amorphic Sugar Centerpiece with Flowers. This dish qualifies as a Advanced level recipe. It should take you about 1 hr 20 min to make this recipe. The Amorphic Sugar Centerpiece with Flowers recipe should make enough food for 1 centerpiece.
You can add your own personal twist to this Amorphic Sugar Centerpiece with Flowers recipe, depending on your culture or family tradition. Don’t be scared to add other ingredients once you’ve gotten comfortable with the recipe! Please see below for a list of potential bakeware items that might be necessary for this Amorphic Sugar Centerpiece with Flowers recipe.
Ingredients for Amorphic Sugar Centerpiece with Flowers
- 5 cups or 1 kilo sugar
- 1 1/4 cup or 400 grams corn syrup
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons or 250 grams water
- Food color paste and assorted colors (chef used blue)
- 5 pounds of sugar
- 5 cups or 1 kilo sugar
- 1 1/4 cup or 400 grams corn syrup
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons or 250 grams water
- Food color paste and assorted colors (chef used green and red)
Directions for Amorphic Sugar Centerpiece with Flowers
- This is an easy centerpiece you can make with sugar. It is always best to have a bowl of cold water available in which you can immerse your hands should you get any sugar on you. This will stop the sugar from burning. As always, it is a good idea to take a class from a professional on working with sugar. This is a skill that professional pastry chefs develop after years of experience. Working with sugar will burn your fingers so know before you start that your fingers will develop burn blisters. For the cooked sugar: Place the sugar, corn syrup and water in a saucepan over high heat. Insert a candy thermometer and cook until the sugar reaches 320 degrees F. Use a clean pastry brush to keep the inside of the saucepan clean as the sugar cooks or the sugar may recrystallize. To do this, dip a clean brush in cold water and brush the inside of the pan clean.
- Open the 5 pound bag of sugar and pour most of it into a deep flat casserole dish. Pour the cooked sugar onto the granulated sugar. Leave some gaps. Sprinkle more granulated sugar on top of the cooked sugar. Use a wooden skewer to mix in some color paste. Do not try to make the color uniform. The end result will be more interesting if the color is not uniform. Sprinkle more sugar on top. It is a good idea to wear gloves to protect your fingers from the heat of the cooked sugar. Use your fingers to move the granulated sugar around the cooked sugar. As it cools, the cooked sugar will harden. Keep an eye on it so it does not become too hard. You want to be able to mold it into the shape you want while it is still pliable. This takes some time. I made a free form shape that had a 90 degree angle.
- For the sugar flowers: Place the sugar, corn syrup and water in a saucepan over high heat. Insert a candy thermometer and cook until the sugar reaches 320 degrees F. Use a pastry brush to keep the inside of the saucepan clean as the sugar cooks or the sugar may recrystallize. To do this, dip a clean brush in cold water and brush the inside of the pan clean.
- Divide the cooked sugar between 2 heatproof large measuring cups. If you want to color the sugar with food colors, this is the time to do so. Add a few drops of red color to one container and green color to the other. Mix each with a wooden skewer.
- Use an offset spatula dipped in the red sugar to spread some sugar onto a silpat baking mat. Make 3- inch long smudges that taper off at one end, these will be the petals. You will need 5 petals to make 1 flower, so if you want more than one flower you will need to make the appropriate number of petals. Repeat the process with the green sugar. This time, use the offset spatula to fan the edges of the petals to resemble the texture of leaves. Have a flexible silicone muffin mold (or a metal muffin tin lined with parchment paper) on the work surface. When the sugar petals have cooled but are still pliable, set the petals inside the cavity of the mold. Dip each petal end into a little of the cooked sugar so you can “glue” the petals together. The depth of the mold cavity will help give the flower a three-dimensional look. Repeat this process with other flower petals to make more flowers.
- When you have the centerpiece base formed into the shape you would like, allow it to cool completely. Use more cooked sugar (which can be reheated in the microwave if necessary) to “glue” the sugar flowers onto the base. Add the leaves.
Bakeware for your recipe
You will find below are bakeware items that could be needed for this Amorphic Sugar Centerpiece with Flowers recipe or similar recipes. Feel free to skip to the next item if it doesn’t apply.
- Cooking pots
- Frying pan
- Steamers
- Colander
- Skillet
- Knives
- Cutting board
- Grater
- Saucepan
- Stockpot
- Spatula
- Tongs
- Measuring cups
- Wooden Spoon
Categories in this Recipe
- French Recipes
- European Recipes
- Candy Recipes and Ideas
- Sugar – Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double sugars, are molecules made of two monosaccharides joined by a glycosidic bond. Common examples are sucrose (glucose + fructose), lactose (glucose + galactose), and maltose (two molecules of glucose). Table sugar, granulated sugar, and regular sugar refer to sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose. In the body, compound sugars are hydrolysed into simple sugars.Longer chains of monosaccharides (>2) are not regarded as sugars, and are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides. Starch is a glucose polymer found in plants, and is the most abundant source of energy in human food. Some other chemical substances, such as glycerol and sugar alcohols, may have a sweet taste, but are not classified as sugar.Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants. Honey and fruit are abundant natural sources of simple sugars. Sucrose is especially concentrated in sugarcane and sugar beet, making them ideal for efficient commercial extraction to make refined sugar. In 2016, the combined world production of those two crops was about two billion tonnes. Maltose may be produced by malting grain. Lactose is the only sugar that cannot be extracted from plants. It can only be found in milk, including human breast milk, and in some dairy products. A cheap source of sugar is corn syrup, industrially produced by converting corn starch into sugars, such as maltose, fructose and glucose.Sucrose is used in prepared foods (e.g. cookies and cakes), is sometimes added to commercially available processed food and beverages, and may be used by people as a sweetener for foods (e.g. toast and cereal) and beverages (e.g. coffee and tea). The average person consumes about 24 kilograms (53 lb) of sugar each year, with North and South Americans consuming up to 50 kilograms (110 lb) and Africans consuming under 20 kilograms (44 lb).As sugar consumption grew in the latter part of the 20th century, researchers began to examine whether a diet high in sugar, especially refined sugar, was damaging to human health. Excessive consumption of sugar has been implicated in the onset of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and tooth decay. Numerous studies have tried to clarify those implications, but with varying results, mainly because of the difficulty of finding populations for use as controls that consume little or no sugar. In 2015, the World Health Organization recommended that adults and children reduce their intake of free sugars to less than 10%, and encouraged a reduction to below 5%, of their total energy intake.
- Corn Recipes
- Dessert – Dessert (/dɪˈzɜːrt/) is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as confections, and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. In some parts of the world, such as much of Central Africa and West Africa, and most parts of China, there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.The term dessert can apply to many confections, such as biscuits, cakes, cookies, custards, gelatins, ice creams, pastries, pies, puddings, macaroons, sweet soups, tarts and fruit salad. Fruit is also commonly found in dessert courses because of its naturally occurring sweetness. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts.
