[Sca-cooks] my summer project - Spanish Galleon

[Robert Downie]

> >For Fall Investiture (crowning the Prince and Princess) we're doing an
> >Elizabethan feast. I thought I'd take advantage of this (we don't do late
> >period often) to do a subtlety (or Warner - I'm not clear on the
> >distinction yet) of a shipwrecked Spanish Galleon.
> >I'm using rock sugar for the reefs. I'm looking for a cookie recipe to
> >create sacks of spices, and I thought I'd use candied fruit for 'jewels'.
> >I am going to use chocolate coins, but I'm trying to keep the rest of it as
> >period as I can.

Remember, in period not all sotleties were 100% edible.  There is a reference to
a feast held in Westminister Hall on July 1st, 1533 that includes "subtelties
and shippes made of waxe, marvylous, gorgeous to behold" (p 75 All the Kings
Cooks)

You can make plaster moulds of skulls, jewels etc, and pour colored sugar syrup
into them for decorations.  If you can get a hold of relatively inexpensive
culinary grade gold leaf, you can "stamp" your own coins (basically leaf over
thin wafers or poured sugar disks) and have some fun by putting the reigning
monarchs of your Kingdom on them.

> >I'd thought of using spun (caramelized) sugar for the rigging, and wet
> >sugar paste for the sails.  I'm also planning on making barnacles and
> >shells out of butter and sugar creamed together.
>

I would advise transporting the sails seperately if at all possible (maybe
incuding some extras in case of breakeage (our sugar plate crab shells
transfered fine, but I had them carefully wrapped in bubble wrap), building them
directly on bamboo skwers that you can anchor in the gingerbread later, and
attatching them with royal icing as a glue.

Alternately, there's nothing saying you can't use actual cloth - or, if you
realy want to stick with edibles, how about rice paper?

> >I'm building the whole thing on a blue platter that has fish embossed
> >around the edges, to act as the ocean.
> >It's kind of an ornate project, but I have all summer to get my act
> >together. Does anyone have opinions? ideas about what I've got so far? What
> >could I do better?
> >Thanks for any advice/help,
> >Gianetta
>

Sounds like it will be a lot of fun :-)  One thing I would suggest is trying to
do a mock up in cardboard.  Heavy bristol curves well, and you can even wrap it
in tin foil and build the gingerbread/biscuit around it for additional support.
If you are using a baked "cookie" type recipe, you could even curve the foil
covered ships planks to the desired shape and bake each plank directly on them
in the oven (don't worry, the coardboard won't burst into flames for the
relatively short time it's in the oven - I've used this method before for
internal supports in bread sculptures)

Faerisa