[Sca-cooks] Marzipan fruits, edible glaze, etc.

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

In no particular order--

The glaze I used is an edible shellac made by CK Products. It was long ago 
enough that I don't remember who I bought it from--some online cake 
decorating supply place.

This is the stuff: http://www.kitchenkrafts.com/product.asp?pn=CE0298

I used it because the wedding was in October and I spent the summer making 
fruit that I wanted to stay nice and not dry out or mold or anything. Also 
it made them shiny.

As for the fruit, I used a combination of newly purchased dry color and 
some that I already had, of various brands. I don't know that one is 
necessarily better than another in this particular case. Color effects 
were accomplished by a combination of colored marzipan (using gel color 
rather than powdered for consistency's sake) as a base and then layers of 
color. Some of it was dry pigments mixed with vodka to form a paint, some 
of it was dry color dry-brushed on with a stiff boar-bristle paintbrush, 
and some of it was gel color. For accents I did a few fruits with "gold" 
luster dust mixed with vodka and then glazed them once dry.

http://pics.livejournal.com/pixel39/pic/0000rez0/g6 actually shows the 
process pretty well--there are completed unpainted fruits drying a little 
waiting to be painted gold, there are painted and glazed fruits including 
two of the gold ones, and the glaze and thinner are in the background 
along with my shaker of icing sugar and my plastic water glass. The fruits 
are on toothpicks stuck into that block of green foam.

Stems and blossom ends were done mostly with cloves. It was a lot of fun, 
but it took a lot of time. Also the cake made my kitchen smell like 
chocolate for three weeks. Ugh.

Margaret FitzWilliam