Pulling sugar, burning thumbs

Usually we bake a selection of toothsome desserts in our Friday morning pastry class, which we then lug home and try to pawn off on friends, family, concierges, construction workers and a random gentleman who had the misfortune of directing his flirtatious remarks at the gaggle of twentysomething girls stumbling down Rue Cambon with a bunch of identical cake boxes. (This same man scurried away like a frightened rodent when I screeched after him, "Voulez-vous une Buche de Noel, Monsieur? S'il vous plait! S'IL VOUS PLAIT!!" Be careful who you whistle at, men of Paris. Like those gypsy women in train stations who desperately implore you to hold their babies, I just might shove a crudely frosted Christmas log in your face and call your bluff. But I probably won't steal your wallet at the same time.)

Last Friday, though, there were no treats to tote home because we spent an entire class playing with ripping hot sugar, and now we all have the blisters to prove it. It's almost impossible to escape the sugar molding class unscathed; even with gloves, the sugar has to be hot enough to remain malleable and thus also hot enough to sear right through tender layers of finger-flesh.

First we watched our teacher pour a boiling pot of sugar, water, glucose and tartaric acid onto a silicone sheet. The sympathetic grimacing began as he started to pull gently at the edges of the sticky mixture, gradually peeling it up off the sheet and patting it into a sphere shape. Anybody that's accidentally burned themselves with hot sugar knows how wretched it feels, so it was hard not to grit my teeth as I watched our chef dip his fingers into this molten sugar swimming pool.


Pouring out the sugar mixture.


Beginning to peel it off the silpat.


Rolling it up as it cools.

Of course, there was a reason why HE was doing it and not us. He told us that he makes molded sugar sculptures for fun on weekends just to keep his skills honed for competitions and the like, so it's safe to assume that sensation probably sizzled away from his fingers decades ago.

We took turns whimpering and twisting the giant, creamy-looking globe into a rope shape. Eventually it was cool enough to work with, so we plopped our portions out beneath roaring hot sugar lamps, pulled on some dopey-looking pink gloves and got started. We were supposed to be making roses, but I think only Nastia came close. Hers was beautiful. I accidentally left the completed portion of my flower under the lamp while trying to yank more chunks of sugar into pseudo-petal shapes, so it quickly melted into a blob that only served to provide a glimpse of the shape a rose might take during a nuclear holocaust.


Learning how to pull the sugar.


My lump.


A model rose.

Meanwhile, our chef cheerily began crafting what would soon become a towering swan sculpture with stamped wings and hand-painted blue eyes, resting atop a series of marbleized sugar pedestals. At one point I looked up from my clumsy, painful sugar pulling to find him fiddling with something that resembled an enema kit. He pumped air through this rubber hose and inflated a tube of sugar to form the swan's belly and wings.

It was fascinating.


Inflating the swan's belly (in front of our stock-laden freezer!).


Shaping the swan.


Assembling the sculpture's base.

Eventually we were all content to give up on our roses, slather some burn balm on the pads of our fingers and gather around to watch the chef work. As Nina rightly noted, "There are so few people in the world who are capable of making something like this." It reminded me of the way crowds tend to gather around the windows of a glass-blowing workshop. There's just something mesmerizing about watching a skilled artisan creating something of such fragile beauty. The sugar was so delicate that the slightest misstep could shatter the whole contraption. In fact, our teacher told us how he had worked on one sculpture for months, left the finished product overnight and returned to find that someone had closed and then opened the kitchen door, causing wind currents to shift and knock it all down.

There is nothing sensible about molded sugar. You wouldn't even really want to eat it unless you're a five-year-old jonesing for a giant sugar buzz. But France forces you to make room in your life for such beautiful, fleeting, impractical things. Molded swans, rose petals, ten minutes worth of garnish on your chocolate cake plate, whatever. Like the filigreed ironwork that bedecks all the balconies in my neighborhood, a blown sugar swan doesn't serve any specific purpose. It just looks pretty. Sometimes that's enough.


The result.