[Sca-cooks] Kirrilys treasure chest

[Kirrily Robert]

In lists.sca.sca-cooks, you wrote:
> All right.  I got forwarded a message from Kirrily and it said this;
>
>>And to my great shame, I've offered to sculpt a "treasure chest" from
>>marzipan tomorrow night, with a bunch of people.  Should be, um,
>>experimental.
>>
>>Yours,
>>
>>Katherine
>
> I hope you tell us more about this chest.  I want to hear all about it and I
> want pictures I tell you ~ pictures~!  Just how long do you think you can
> keep something like this a secret girl??

*sigh* ... is no mailing list sacred?  Heh.  Please note that this is
being made as part of the schtick for Saturday's event, and anyone from
Skrael should keep quiet about it til then, OK?  I know there are a
couple of you here, but I think most of you have said you're woefully
backlogged, so perhaps you won't even see this before then :)

OK.  We made the chest last night, or at least most of it.  It's made of
about 6kg of marzipan (rough estimate), most of which is made brown by
the addition of spices (ginger, cloves, nutmeg and LOTS of cinnamon).
We had five people taking turns at the food processor, and we all took
turns kneading it so that the spices were evenly distributed through the
whole batch.

We made a form for the chest, in two parts.  The base is a plain
rectangular box, and the lid is half a cylinder.  Yes, the traditional
"pirate chest" shape.  These were made of cardboard, then covered in
aluminium foil.

We put each of the forms open-side-down on a baking tray, then rolled
the marzipan out into sheets about 1/2" thick, and placed them on each
of the faces of the forms.  It was hard to make them stick together at
the joins, so in some cases it was more a matter of draping the sheets
over and leaving the seams somewhere in the middle of a side.  The gaps
and cracks were smoothed with some mushy rosewatery marzipan.

Then we took some plain marzipan (no spices, hence white) and laid
straps across the top and sides of the chest, like those iron bands you
see around treasure chests.  Little nails/rivets/whatever were made of
tiny balls of the leftover brown marzipan.

This is its current state, and it's drying and hardening in my kitchen
right now.

Between now and Saturday, I'm going to make some hinges and a lock from
the white marzipan.  The chest will go to the event disassembled, be
filled with stuff, then "locked" shut by sticking the lock and hinges to
the chest with more marzipan or sugar paste or something.

The overall dimensions of the chest are about 30cm wide by 30cm high by
20cm deep.  The average thickness of the boards is about 1/2".  It's
*heavy*... I lifted the lid this morning just to see how it was doing,
and it was quite hard to manoeuvre.

The interesting bit about this exercise was making it structurally
sound.  I'm still worried that it might fall apart on the day, but I
*think* it will be alright.  This is my first effort at marzipan
sculpting (as opposed to just making little munchies out of it) so it's
all a bit experimental.

Incidentally, part of the plan is that it *should* be broken.  We want
this thing eaten.  I *don't* want to have to take it home with me.
That's one of the reasons I'm making the lock and hinges breakable, so
people will get the hint that this thing isn't some sacred object never
to be touched.

Anyway, I'll get some pictures on Saturday when it's fully assembled.

I should also give thanks and kudos to Wilhelm, Christabel, Charles and
Reinhart who all showed up at my house on very short notice bearing
kilograms of almonds, and helped with all the hard work.

Yours,

Katherine

--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"