SC - Rubber stamping food

[Drake & Meliora]

Aelfwyn

> Wow! Lightbulbs going off in all directions! I love this idea.
> Please, can
> you tell me details on just how you do this? (Any tips on food
> color paste
> brands? a regular rubber stamp? before baking?) Oh boy, a new way
> to decorate
> my food. Happy dance.
> Aelfwyn the easily amused

Glad to please <g>.  Actually to the best of my knowledge this is a really
OOP method of decorating food. And not just the use of rubber - I have not
seen devices or animals painted onto food items in any period texts.

However, it is a fun up-oneship to do to your neighbouring Barony. We
originally arranged these for an illusion feast I ran (and Mari - the now
Clerk of the Lochac Cooks Guild ran the kitchen at the last minute for me).

A good friend of mine (who alas is not in the Society anymore) took a copy
of the Griffin rampant from our Baronial device into a rubber stamp store.
The produced two stamps. One about an inch square and one about 2 inches
square.  When she went to collect them from the store the clerk opened a pad
of ink and was about to push the stamp into it when she screamed at him.  He
just wanted to test it so she could see the design <lol>.

Anyway we use red food paste (as our device is red and white) which is
diluted slightly with water until it has a creamy consistency - kinda like
the thickness of gouache pain that illuminators use.  And simply stamp into
the paste and them onto the food. The brand of colour paste I use is: Bakers
Preferred, Manufactured by Berghausen Corp in Cincinnati. The colour I use
is Gel Paste Food Color 5416 Super Red.  I am sure that could use a more
appropriate media such as sandalwood in egg white or somesuch - frankly we
haven't bothered with alternatives yet.

Due to the nature of the dye and the hecticness of my kitchen, we usually
stamp the food after it has been cooked. The colour media we use needs a
fairly strong flat surface to adhere to - and we find that as it is a
shallow stamp, uncooked foods such as pastry and cookie dough do tend to
stick to the stamp.

For the illusion feast we had some chicken drumsticks dressed up as soldiers
inside a gingerbread fort (an idea I took from someone on this list).  The
soldiers inside the fort had griffins stamped on their shields.  The
soldiers besieging the fort had black griffins (I think my friend painted
those freehand).

Incidentally the moat around the fort was the supposed cerulean blue sauce -
that stayed red!!!  I'll get a summary of that discussion to Stefan someday
soon.

Since then we have used the stamps to decorate biscuits (we took to another
Barony's event - heh heh heh) and to differentiate between different sorts
of lidded pies.

Hope this helps - but as I stated earlier, I have no knowledge of this being
a period practice with western European foodstuffs.

Mel - who should REALLY get back to her Chemistry study.