Spinning Sugar

Tomorrow I am hosting a shower for Liz and therefore I reserved a fun cake to make for it!

For the shower I'm making the Saint-Honoré Trifle. It is beautiful trifle and I am so excited to use my new trifle dish.

What I am most excited about this dish though  is the spun sugar topping.  Tomorrow you will hear about how the trifle turned out but right now you get to hear about how cool this spun sugar is. I think I've developed a new passion.



First you boil 1/3 cup of corn syup and 1/2 cup of sugar- stirring constantly.  Once it reaches 360 degrees (it is critical to measure it properly) then you pour it into a glass measure and let it sit for a few minutes.  If you put a fork in it and it drips when you pull the fork out, it's not ready yet.  When you pull the fork up it should have a steady line of caramel coming from the fork.

As the sugar boils and even as it sits, it turns a dark amber color.

Tape 2 wooden spoons to your counter top about 12 inches apart.  I put a tarp underneath to keep everything clean and then sprayed the spoons a couple of times with Pam.

Now the fun begins- using the fork you lift up and quickly shake it back and fourth between the two spoons so that the stream rests upon each handle and droops in the middle.

 Once you do that for awhile, it's ready to shape the caramel drips into whatever shape you want.  Some people shape it into a dome to fit on top of a cake. This looks really professional and elegant.  Liz likes crazy fun things though so for this shower I decided to let the topping stay wild. After all, it is a lingerie shower.

So all you do is take it off of the spoons (carefully without breaking the strands) and shape it with your hands:

And voila! Here's the topper:

Stay tuned for the Trifle tomorrow!