Using sugar as a medium for art can be very tricky. Sugar is hydroscopic which means that it attracts water; therefore the sugar sculpture begins to attract water just by being out in the open air. Sugar showpieces do not last very long because of this fact. They eventually will begin to droop and sag. Sugar art is made by boiling sugar and water with glucose (glucose prevents recrystallisation of the sugar) to a certain temperature range. Sugar can be cast into a mold or pulled into shapes. When sugar is pulled it aerates the sugar, which causes the sugar to become more opaque. Pulling sugar may seem to be a very easy thing to do, but you are working with a medium that is very hot (over 200 F), and the sugar does give quite a bit of resistance to being pulled.
The sugar centerpiece, pictured above, consists of a base that was cast, 2 pulled flowers, a rope of string sugar (which the flowers are attached to), 2 pink pulled ribbons and what I would refer to as a light green wrap. When you cook sugar it sticks to the bottom of the pot, the green wrap was the sugar that I pulled off of the bottom of a pan, while we were boiling the sugar off with water. The blurry picture below is just to show you how tall one of my pink ribbons was!
The miniature sugar showpiece was a lot of fun to make, I enjoyed almost burning my fingers off to make an artistic piece…
A Bird's Eye View...
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