I have this cake idea I've been wanting to try but it involves a three tier ganache covered cake being surrounded by spun sugar and I have no idea how to do spun sugar. I tried searching the site but didn't find too much. Does anyone have any idea how this is achieved?
Something like the cake shown here but with ganache underneath
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7BMrWZ0bxYM/Sa4cnFCYDfI/AAAAAAAAA5U/ZEa7Y-RP6bQ/s400/rj_wed_20blog.jpg
You need a tool that looks like a wire whisk with the end cut off so there are individual spokes, rather than a loop at the end. Before you boil the sugar, set up some newspaper/parchment on the floor and suspend some wooden dowels or spoons off the edge of a the table (so any sugar that drops will land on the newspaper, not your floor).
Then, just boil your sugar and stir it with the whisk. Take the whisk out of the sugar and fling it over the dowels. You'll end up with long strands of sugar handing over the dowels, which you can then shape accordingly.
Look on Martha Stewarts' website. You have to boil the sugar to a certain temp and then cool it immediately by putting the pot in cold water. I am going for my first lesson on 20 Feb. I also know that it is affected by humidity. Make sure. You do not want the spun sugar to collapse on your cake.
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tip: make your own cool tool by just taking a metal wisk (not the tiny ones) and cutting off where the loops start. Easy!
After you fling it over the dowels, you'll have long hanging strands. You can play around with it and just fling the sugar 2-3 times, then pull off the strands and shape them (so you don't have too much at once) or fling move sugar over the dowels so you have a thicker set of strands to shape.
I forgot to tell you to oil everything (including the dowels) so the sugar will come off. Don't forget an oiled pair of scissors, too, to cut the strands.
We used this technique to make a bird's nest by just gathering all of the strands from the dowels and shaping them into a nest. To get the more flowing strands in your picture, just gently bend/curve them and they'll set up/harden. Of course, sugar is very hygroscopic, so you want to do this not very far in advance or the sugar will absorb moisture from the air and start to fall/droop.
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