Winter Sample

M A G A Z I N E

THE Information Source for Bakers & Sugar Artists

The Adventures of a Sugar Super Hero Cake artist Peggy Tucker is fierce with a torch and even mightier at battle with life threatening forces.

Festive Holiday Tutorials: Wafer Paper Poinsettia Gelatin Snow Globe Nesting a Home Gingerbread Santa Cookie Frog Princess Sculpture Christmas Cactus Cake Nutcracker Figurine

Highlights from The Americas Cake & Sugarcraft Fair

WINTER 2015

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Tutorials

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42 Nesting a Home by Chef Norman R. Davis and Chef Zane Berg

Christmas Cactus In Bloom

by Diane Gruenberg

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57 Frog Princess Sculpture by Margherita Ferrara

Gelatin Snow Globe

by Lourdes Reyes

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Creating a Nutcracker

Wafer Paper Poinsettia

by Gilles Leblanc

by Chef Mike Terry

79 Gingerbread Santa Claus

by Chef Jörg Amsler

Departments Smells of a Swiss Christmas

by Chef Jörg Amsler

What’s New, What’s Hot Worth The Investment

by Ruth Rickey

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Features Live 16 Pastry Review Winter Issue 2015 Pastry Live returned to the Atlanta, Georgia area to showcase the latest pastry techniques

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The Art of Amezaiku

Amezaiku is the fascinating art of rapidly manipulating multi-colored taffy to create sculpted animals and characters

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The Adventures of a Sugar Super Hero

by Theresa Happe

She’s sweet as sugar; onetheless, cake artist Peggy Tucker is fierce with a torch and even mightier at battle with life threatening forces

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Americas Cake & Sugarcraft Fair Review

by Maria Nerius

Get the scoop on The Americas Cake & Sugarcraft Fair that was held Sept.1820, 2015 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando!

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Editorial Cheryl Naughton Publisher cheryl@edibleartistsnetwork.com Theresa Happe Executive Editor info@edibleartistsnetwork.com Joanne Prainito Creative Director joanne@edibleartistsnetwork.com Columns Jörg Amsler Ruth Rickey Maria Nerius Contributors Chef Zane Beg Chef Norman R. Davis Margherita Ferrara Diane Gruenberg Gilles Leblanc Lourdes Reyes Chef Mike Terry Editorial Offices P.O. Box 870614 Stone Mountain, GA 30087 Advertising Sandy Griggs 309/633-5004 sandy@edibleartistsnetwork.com Production Samantha Laskowski Graphic Designer sam@samldesign.com Subscription Services To subscribe to the magazine please visit www.EdibleArtistsNetwork.com Edible Artists Network Magazine is published 4 times per year by Edible Artists Network, LLC., P. O. Box 870614, Stone Mountain, GA, 30087.

Copyright 2015 by Edible Artists Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. For reprints of any article please contact the editor.

Contribute To Our Magazine If you’re a cake artists or writer and would like to see your work published in Edible Artists Network Magazine, please send your tutorial idea or feature proposal to Cheryl at cheryl@edibleartistsnetwork.com.

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Smells of a Swiss Christmas

By Chef Jörg Amsler

I am no stranger to dreadfully cold winters. Growing up in the Swiss Alps, I am all too familiar with freezing temperatures and ten foot long, two hundred pound icicles hanging high up in the air off the chalet rooves. Bitter cold wind gusts made your nose run and freeze at the same time. We had massive snowfalls during the night to the point where you couldn’t open your front door. My exhaled breath was so steamy, you would think I had a boiling tea pot in my lungs.

Thank God, my grandmother was the queen of knitting.

She would knit all year round - socks, long johns, sweaters, pullovers, scarves, mittens, hats, vests and jackets. I would ask her in the middle of summer, “What are you making, grandma?” She would peek at me above her low riding glasses and reply, “Your Christmas present. Matching hat and gloves.” That sounded super exciting to me. You can keep the toys; give me something that keeps me warm.

Just keep me alive.

Life was very primitive in my tiny farmer’s village and winters very tough. For example, there was no road

Maiänderli Cookies

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maintenance or service. The farmers would plow the roads with tractors. But before doing so, they would have to take care of their livestock. That would leave us with no roads to get to school eight miles away into the next town. All the kids would meet up at the last farm house at the bottom of the village at five a.m. Frau Sigg had a pot of hot chocolate ready and gave us all one cup. Then we would strap on our cross country skis and walk eight miles to town to be there by eight o’clock when class started. Later, when school was out and the roads cleared, the farmers would pick us up in a hay wagons and bring us back.

Now, living in Boston, when we get three to four inches of snow, everything shuts down and school is canceled. They call that a snow day. I laugh at it every time and think of the forest and fields we had to cross in blizzard condition on our two and a half hour journey to school, just to arrive with freezing toes and fingers.

Looking back, I guess not all of it was torture. We had fun, too, going skating, playing hockey on the nearby frozen pond, skiing and sledding downhill. I also remember when

Rows of Cookies Left to Right: Haselnuss läckerl, Spitzbueba, Maiänderli, Zimt Stärnä, Brunsli, Vanilla Kipferl and Anis Mödeli I came home from playing outside, frozen to the bone, my dad would make us a cup of tea with a spoon of sugar and a half shot of rum. It tasted awesome and made me feel better and warm within minutes.

But my favorite winter memories were right before Christmas. I would enter the house from the cold outside, walking into warm air and smell the sweet smell of my mom’s famous Christmas cookies. Every holiday season my mom baked these cookies using recipes handed down from her great, great grandma to her great grandmother to her grandmother and her mother.

As a pastry chef, I have kept the tradition going and bake these cookies every year for the holidays. They come around only once a year and then they disappear again until the next holiday season. There is my favorite called brunsli, a rich cookie with lots of almonds, chocolate and cocoa. It is very chocolatey, gooey in the center, and what makes it amazing is the addition of Kirsch, which is a cherry schnapps. Then there is zimt stärnä, also made with no flour, lots of nuts and a large amount of cinnamon. Cut out in the shape of a star, it gets a white sugar glaze on top and is a little bit under-baked so it stays nice and soft in the center. Another delicious cookie if spitzbueba, a vanilla flavored dough sandwiched with raspberry filling and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Maiänderli is a delicious shortbread cookie with lots of butter and sugar baked to a golden brown until the ingredients caramelize and

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create great flavor. It gets brushed with an egg wash to give it a shiny look and a light brown color. Then there is the awesome haselnuss läckerl cookie made with spices, lots of hazelnuts and candied orange and lemon peels. As a sweetener, we use honey instead of sugar and almost not bake it, rather we let it dry. Then it gets finished with a lemon glaze. And last but not least is the delicious anis mödeli, an anise flavored dough with a bit of rum and shaped like a bear claw.

My mom would go into the city to get all the ingredients.

She ground all her own nuts and prepared the cookie doughs with no mixer. She would roll them out and carefully cut them with old, traditionally shaped Christmas cookie cutters. Then she placed them on the cookie trays and baked them. Everything was done by hand from start to finish. Then she would place them in large tin containers and store them in the basement pantry. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would get up with my brother and sneak in there to steal some of the cookies. I am sure my mom knew, but let us do it anyway. She would make beautiful cookie arrangements on platters and give them as gifts or set them out when someone came over for a cup of tea and schnapps. Yes, that’s right, back home we have a shot of schnapps every day and maybe that’s why people are healthy and live long lives.

Everyone around me in my village made Christmas cookies, as well, and pretty much the same recipes with slight

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variations. I guess it’s like the Caribbean where everyone makes black cake, also known as rum cake. And each person will tell you, “I make the best, you have to try mine.” So, every time I visited a neighbor or went over a friend’s house, there would be cookies available during the holiday season. But nothing compared to my mom’s.

Hands down, my mom made the best ones. Nobody would even come close. The traditional baked goods and sweets are probably my favorite things about the holiday season.

Not just the ones my mom did at home, but also all the other traditional and seasonal treats that every small bakery would carry.

It wasn’t just our traditional Swiss baked goods that were scrumptious; neighboring countries, Germany, Austria, France and Italy had their traditional baked goods, as well.

There was Lebkuchen from Germany, a similar and softer version of a gingerbread. From France, there was the famous buche de noel, more commonly known in the U.S. as the yuletide log; delicious vanilla kipferl; stollen from Austria and freshly baked panettone from Italy.

Switzerland, being landlocked and surrounded by countries, shared in enjoying these holiday desserts from neighboring countries. The nice thing about Europe is that there are so many small countries, each with its very distinguished, traditional sweets. It creates a large variety of delicious cookies, cakes, pastries, chocolate treats and assorted breads. Although unique to each country, these desserts would find their way over the border and end up in neighboring countries and even beyond. There was bolo rei from Portugal, turron from Spain, cozanac from Romania and lussekatt from Sweden. Into the mixture, Norway would add pepperkake and kutia came from Poland. All of these desserts are unique and mouthwatering. But I still love my mom’s Christmas cookies the most and would pick them over anything else.

Learning about your heritage and making traditional baked goods is a great way to spend time with your family. It gets passed on to your children for generations to come. For me, it creates great memories and takes me back to my childhood.

I am glad I learned the secret recipes from my mom, and ever since I left home at a young age, I have kept the tradition alive and baked them for Christmas.

I place them on a pretty plater and decorate it with a festive red ribbon, a sprig of fresh green pine and a silver jingle bell.

They are so loved and desired,

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my friends ask me as early as July if I’m making my Swiss cookies again. There is something about making your own gifts; it’s very personal and people love to get your homemade creations. Even though all my friends know that that’s what they’re getting beforehand, it’s a tradition that I’ve kept in my life that creates anticipation, appreciation and lots of great feedback, as they can share it with family and friends. Nowadays, Christmas and gift giving have become so commercialized; I would much prefer to spend my time in my kitchen than in traffic and the mall.

Baking is and always has been very soothing to me. I also bake my own bread. I feel like it connects me to the world.

In a time where we, as people, disagree on so many things, have become intolerant and fight many wars over race, power, religious beliefs and cultural differences, bread is the one thing we all have in common. Everywhere on earth, people break bread as part of a meal and use it as a symbolic representation when celebrating traditions and life events. It may come in different shapes and flavors, but it’s simply bread.

Due to the fact that I’ve been baking all my life and have worked in so many different places, I’m always asked, “What is your favorite thing to do?” And I know people expect some culinary, high tech, brilliant answer like, “Oh, by far, this triple-stacked, nitrogen cooled, specially infused, laminated such and such!” But, it’s not. I tell them, to their disappointment, it’s baking bread. Maybe it’s not so much about the difficulty of the task but what it represents.

I am honored to say, “I am a baker,” and have the privilege to create something that anybody can relate to; something that connects us all.

Zopf, a sweet, braided bread.

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m o o l B n I s u t c a C s a C h r i st m

A Tutorial by

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Photos by K

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DOWNLOAD THE PDF

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• 14”, 12” 6”x 6” round cake or dummies • 18” drum covered in Ivory fondant • Platinum Flower Paste • Petal dust, terracotta, baby pink, ginko, grass, gold, buttercup, gold sand & azalea • 50/50 paste • Textured pin, linen • Acrylic rolling pin • Royal icing, med/stiff – Ivory • Wire 33 or 30g, 24g • Mold Acanthus Scroll • Gold sugar beads • Veiner, Poppy all purpose

Supplies Needed

• Cutters, Flexi mistletoe, gloriosa, lily and smallest rose petal cutter (Various leaf cutters can be used) • Ball tool • Petal shield/or plastic • Cell pad • Gum glue • Brush water bottle • Dusting brushes • Sea sponge small piece • Work board non stick • Scissors fine • Floral tape, green ¼ & ½ width • Pallet knife small • Tweezers • Crimper, wavy line

• Friller tool • Bulbulous cone • Cutting tool • Paint Mate, vodka or Everclear • Strip Cutter • Ivory ribbon for 18” drum • Gold spray • Ribbon insertion blade or tool • Stamens fine white • White glue • Icing tip 44 • Confectioners’ glaze 50/50 • Q-tips • Corsage pins • Styrofoam insert small • Oreo cookie crumbs

Prep: Cover 14” & 12” cakes or dummies with fondant. Cover 6”x 6” cake with

fondant using linen textured rolling pin. Cover 18” cake drum with fondant texturing with friller tool.

Step 1: Crimping Crimp each cake immediately after covering with fondant. Move 0 ring down the crimper to obtain the width required for the pattern. Hold the wavy line crimper straight up and press into the fondant ½” from edge of cake and gently squeeze together. Release and remove the crimper. Crimp two rows on each cake one above the other.

Step 2: Sponging Mix gold dust with vodka or Paintmate. Dip sponge into mixture and dab on side of 14” cake just up to top rotating your sponge as you go.

Step 3: Ribbon Insertion Cut paper template in shape desired. Roll out Platinum Flower Paste or fondant. Place strip cutter on paste and cut out strips. Cut the strips into ½“pieces. Curve each ribbon piece over straw or brush handle to form. Dry completely and spray with gold spray. Starting in back of cake, with ribbon insertion blade or tool cut two indentions following the template and press curved ribbon piece into the indentions.

Background Image © leonskinner - fototlia.com

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