Pastillage Centerpiece

In Tuesday's Candies & Confectionaries class on April 12, we finished our pastillage centerpieces. We first had to assemble the pastillage base in the shape of a box. We used the pieces we had cut previously to do this and glued them together with royal icing much like you would assemble a gingerbread house.



After the box was assembled, I had to carefully remove my piped pieces from the sheet protectors. I used my offset baby spatula to help loosen them from the plastic. On the 12 center pieces I piped, I had to turn them over and pipe eyes on the birds for consistency. Only one broke in this process, so that was a good sign. I then had to carefully glue them to the box and to each other using royal icing. Once this was completed, I used my baby spatula to loosen the side ornaments; only 2 of 40 of these had broken so I was in good shape. I then used royal icing again to glue these to the box. At the end, my centerpiece looked like this:









This was a unique exercise. I'm not quite sure I will ever do something like this again, but I learned a lot in the process and would definitely be able to do so if the challenge presented itself. I'm really happy with my result and finished product, and that's always a good feeling.