[Sca-cooks] Gunthar's Adventures with Sugar plate (very long, grab some tea and a scone...)

[Michael Gunter]

Okay, you mugs made it look way too easy. Since there was
discussion a bit back on making sugarplate mock cinnamon sticks
I decided to give it a try. I mean, how hard can it be to take
play-dough, roll it out, dust it with spices and roll it up? Ta-da!
and I have a groovy little centerpiece for my Tournament of
the Roses display.

You guys suck.

I went to a local hobby shop where it has fancy cake making stuff
and bought a big can of gum Traficant because I wanted the real
thing, being all authentic and suchlike. I got powdered ginger and
cinnamon, lots of powdered sugar (I'm not so authentic like to
grind my own Sugar in the Raw to a powder, I leave that to the
drudges), rose water and prepare to make stuff to wow the masses.
I have these cruel evil books showing neat sugarplate recreations
from the period. Knights on horseback, castles, goblets and plates.
This stuff must be easy!

Of course I conveniently forgot the last time I encountered this
evil substance. It was at a Cookscon a few years back when Alys
Katherine hosted a class in sugarplate. But she provided all of us
with these nice little playdough cakes where everyone made wonderful
little sculptures and I made an ashtray. Eventually I was invited to go
in the kitchen and help stir the soup.....

ANY-way.....I opened the can of an innocent looking white powder
(like cocaine, the snowy substance hides Satan lurking) and added the
water. The instructions say to stir this until it's mixed. The instructions
don't indicate that your spoon eventually weighs 5 lbs as you try to
mix this gunk. Once properly mixed you dust a working surface with
powdered sugar and pour this nearly alive amoeba onto the surface
in order to knead it into submission. Now I have to feel that there is
something wrong with using powdered sugar in order to make things
less sticky.....

So, trusting how easy you guys say this is I don't exactly pour the mass
onto the board as convince it with spoons, tongs and a cattle prod. Once
on the powered sugar it glared at me and oozed towards any crack in
the counter in order to escape. Now the instructions say to knead
until well mixed. Have you ever tried to knead something that resembled
the end results of an elephant with an allergy? It didn't knead. It rolled
around and stuck to everything. The counter, my hands, the rose
water bottle, the sink, the cat (I don't even OWN a cat!), the ceiling,
and the sugar. I have hands that make me look like I'm the makeup
artist for the Alien movies.

Then the phone rang.....

Okay, ignore the phone. Keep beating this goo into submission, I mean
kneading it until it is "well mixed". How can you tell when an amoeba is
well mixed? When your hands get tired, that's how. Now I got to take
the semi-firm substance and coax it into a plastic bag. Envision giving a
cat a bath in a teacup. I swear it yowled at me. After several attempts
and the use of a spatula, a cutting board and begging I got it in the
bag and sealed it tightly. It grumbled and hissed at me but it was trapped.
The instructions happily assured me that it would firm up in the bag if
I waited long enough. I wonder if 5 years would be good? But cleaned
the kitchen, the counter, the sink, the floor, the non-existent cat, my
houseplants and my truck parked outside of the remaining goo. It
had a disturbing habit of giggling as I scraped it up.

I called the girlfriend back and explained why I didn't answer the phone
since I was reluctant to have a cellphone permanently grafted to my ear.
She thought it was amusing, the sadist.

After 30 or so minutes and several shots of Jack Daniel's courage in a 
bottle
I approached the bag with a large stick, a welder's mask and the kind of
electroshock stick they use on Hannibal Lector. Also, the girlfriend wanted
to experience the situation so I have the cellphone balanced on my shoulder
giving a Geraldo Rivera on-scene commentary and walking like Quasimodo.
With trembling fingers I unzipped the bag. Nothing, no rush of angry sticky
goo with a taste for human blood, just a white lump of a doughlike 
substance.
Now this was more like it! Again referring to the happy instructions on the
can I sprayed the counter with Pam and scattered more of that wondrous
non-sticky-making powdered sugar. The sugarplate dropped out with a
satisfying splap. But it wasn't play-dough yet. More like a very soft and
sticky dough. Again with the kneading and dumping of powdered sugar.
Again it fights, within the lump were pockets of sticky resistance. The
girlfriend was much amused at my squeaking and cries of outrage as
the goo stuck to everything. But, I'm a knight and a count, I will not
be defeated by sugar! I gamely kept kneading and adding sugar until it
resembled a slightly less sticky mass.

And now, the creation!

Once it sort of resembled a dough it was time to whip out the dowel.
I dusted the area with confectioner's sugar and grabbed a walnut sized
piece of evil. Then mashed it down and rolled it out to a flat shape. Well,
that was the idea. I rolled it around the rolling pin several times. Peeled 
it
off and rolled it again. The hand is mightier than the rolling pin so I just
mashed it down and powdered the hell out of it until it behaved. Then
I sprinkled cinnamon and ginger over it. I think the ancients used a better
distribution system because my cinnamon sticks wound up with yellow
and brown spots. Trying to spread it around was....unfortunate.
I also figured it would be best to roll them around a thin dowel. The only
thin dowel I had was around 4 feet long so this was an adventure in
itself. But I got better, my tears and curses were a major source of
amusement to Deana. She seemed to especially like my description of
my "cinnamon sticks" as skinned spotted sea slugs. I guess the best
description that can be said for them is they are "Unfortunate Looking".

But there they are, hardening up and looking like rather diseased
cinnamon sticks or maybe bits of dough sprinkled with cinnamon and
ginger. I'm sure they resemble the things in period. I mean, the
tables were lit with candles and such and they didn't have eyeglasses,
the Lord couldn't see too well....could he?

Gunthar