"Davida Chazan - The Chocolate Lady" wrote in
message ...
NOTE: My Correct Address is in my signature (just remove the spaces).
On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 20:52:39 GMT, "JMF" wrote:

I made spun sugar for the first time today. No problem with everything up
to
the final step: taking the strands of spun sugar hanging down and
"molding
them into an interesting shape." The recipes talk about making a net, or
a
halo, or all kinds of other cool things.

Except when I gather up the strands, I tend to end up with a big mess.

It occurs to me that some of you might have developed some skill with
this
and might have a few tips up your sleeve on how to gather up the strands
skillfully and make the shapes. Anybody have any ideas or recommendations
on
this?

Never done it myself, but there's a British cook that appears on TV
from time to time (on BBC Prime - Ready, Steady, Cook) who is
particularly good at doing this. One thing I saw him do is drizzle
(very, very quickly) it over a bowl or other object to get a
particular shape. The idea isn't to _gather_ them into the shapes,
but rather to try to drizzle them into the shape you want to begin
with.

That makes perfect sense to me - it's so hard to handle that it makes sense
to try to guide it directly into the shape. I'll give it a try!

John