[Sca-cooks] Pastry decoration - a question

[Philip Troy]

On Wednesday 25 July 2001 01:39, you wrote:
> Hi Everyone -
>
> This Saturday coming I will be assisting in the kitchen for the Barional
> Investiture of the new Barony of St Florians (Brisbane, Australia)
>
> The dish I've been asked to make is "Bunnies in Pastry" - using whole
> bunnies (sans heads & fur & stuff); and the Feast Steward would like me to
> mould the Pastry to look like a "life-like" sitting Rabbit.
>
> What I need to know between now (Wednesday afternoon) and then is - once
> I've modelled the pastry in to "Bunnyness" - is it possible to shade in the
> eyes/nose/ears with food colouring - will this survive the cooking process?
> Or is it something to be applied after Cooking?

Most colors will change as they heat, but you may be able to use this to your
advantage. You might try adding a few drops of ordinary red food coloring to
beaten egg yolk, which should give you a deep, reddish-orange, and painting
it on the areas in question perhaps half an hour, maybe twenty minutes,
before the pastry is done. That mixture should become a nearly chocolate
brown pretty quickly.

I assume you'll be bearing in mind that the shape, especially various
protrusions like ears, will have a marked tendency to brown quickly (or
perhaps burn) in comparison to the rest of the pastry while the inside cooks
through?

> What's the best type of colouring to use? (I figure on using only one
> colour - black or brown or something likewise dark)

Period recipes speak of using cooked and ground blood as a black coloring,
possibly added to beaten egg as above, but I think you'll do okay with the
pseudo-tempera described above.

Adamantius