[Sca-cooks] Re: Tools for Playing with Food

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

Most workers of gum paste (sugar paste, gum paste, donut, napkin) who do
cake decorating do a lot of flowers, and there are zillions of flower
petal and leaf cutters out there. For other shapes most of my books
recommend a rolling pin, pasta roller, or similar doohickey, and a sharp
paring knife. And sometimes a cardboard template.

A cookie press might not be useful for sugar paste, as it needs to be
fairly stiff, but would be just fine for marzipan or rolled fondant (which
can also be pretty squishy at room temperature).

The kits you can get for doing gum paste flowers and such usually also
have a couple of modelling tools, and a block of foam for doing the
modelling on, in addition to the cutters. They aren't strictly necessary,
as you can do modelling with things you find around your kitchen, but they
do come in the kit.

Margaret (who has been promising herself a weekend of playing with paste
for well over a year now)


> There are clay guns and there are also various
> cookie presses that extrude different shapes,
> depending upon which plate you are using. And
> you can also use a pasta roller to roll the dough
> thin, although it takes some practice.
> If you have a good library near you, go take a
> look at the various gumpaste/sugar/cake decorating
> books and see what they are using to create their
> flowers, shapes, etc.
>
> Johnna Holloway  Johnnae llyn Lewis
>
> lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:>
> > A few months ago, there was discussion on list of a tool that you
> > could put a paste-like substance into, and press it out through
> > variously shaped plates... (not a Play-Do Factory)>
> > Now that i am starting to make strange things out of sugary
> > substances, i'd love this device.
> > Anahita