It’s Yule time again and for the local Barony’s Yule I was asked if I would take on making the subtlety for the head table. I wasn’t otherwise involved inthe event and said yes. (Helium hand sticks again.) The head chef had a rough idea involving a cookie chess board as a nod to the mid-16th Century German Julfest and I just ran with it.
Since I’m more of the artistic type, I went and roped in my bestie, Eithne, for her knowledge in the chemistry side of baking. I took to puzzling out the what this would look like. Initally, I had grand ideas of building a cookie box with chessboard top but due to kitchen time availability and space, decided against it. There were a couple of other variations before I settled on the final layout. After talking with Eithne, we worked out which materials we should use and how to keep it mostly period and fun, while working with a number of challenging allergies at high table.
Elements
The final layout and design of the subtlety came together, and we had a total of 3 separate elements.
Chess Board
For the chess board we knew we had to go with a cookie that wouldn’t spread or puff too much. We played with the idea of using gingerbread but discarded it in favor of using Eithne’s recipe for fynecakes. They puff far less and don’t spread at all. On a very rough test bake the score marks stayed and the square that we cut it to did stay square looking. We decided not to play with it too much since we found a workable solution. We did opt to swap the rose water for orange since I can’t stand the stuff.
Not All Black and White
A chess board is usually black and white. In my head, I visualized using food based dyes to get, at least, a dark brown. The easy way of coloring anything dark brown is to use chocolate. Unfortunately, due to allergies, the use of chocolate was out. We briefly played with the idea of using food based dyes to make a purple and yellow or blue and yellow board or pieces.
SCIENCE!
This is where we got to go a bit mad scientist. Colors are interesting, and we tried to get the brightest colors we could. We knew that mixing colors with the cookie dough and marzipan would wash out the colors to some degree.
We derived yellow from saffron, red from beets, and purple from cabbage. The color blue was played with as well, which we acquired by adding baking soda in minuscule amounts. We found that we had to wait after adding each bit of baking soda as it would take time to react. If we added too much it turned green. We also found that adding the color to marzipan turned it slightly purple again as marzipan is apparently acidic. So we had to over add baking soda so that it was slightly green so that it turned the right color when added to the marzipan and cookie dough.
The yellow dye was too pale and would have required more saffron than I had. I wish I had had access to safflower as I may have been able to reach the desired saturation with that. Overall we couldn’t get the cookie dough to take the color well, especially after it was baked, the color faded. So coloring the cookie dough that way, was out. The blue faded to pastel or went green in the marzipan so instead we decided to go with the purple from the cabbage and leave the marzipan in its natural state. Purple and white chess pieces, check.
What’s good for the goose…
The chessboard still needed a solution, however. Since we had no allergies to spices, we opted to color part of the cookie dough with cinnamon. The cinnamon and orange flavors in the base dough worked really well together, so we decided to keep that going forward. Erin made a few modifications including using orange juice for moisture instead of water to intensify the orange flavor and cut back on the orange oil and replace a portion with orange extract. The recipe with orange oil alone tased somewhat soapy, which was unappealing. All in all, the resulting flavors were amazing!
Chessmen
The chessmen, I decided early on, were going to be molded. The molds themselves were fairly cheap (which I should have spent more on) and a huge time saver. That, and I suck at sculpting, so that option was out.
The first molding came out okay but trying to clean the molding seam only resulted in a disfigured blob. Marzipan keeps well in the freezer and comes out firm, so we made a few in the molds and had to rubber band the halves together since the molds wouldn’t lock together. After about 20 minutes in the freezer the chess pieces came out much firmer, and we were able to use a very sharp paring knife and xacto knife to clean the seam lines.
We let the chess piece sit out and found that it cracked. Not large or too significant, but enough that it didn’t look good. To be fair, the air in the house was very dry due to heating and all, and so we supposed that the pieces dried too quickly. I molded a few more and put them in a Tupperware in the fridge. That seemed to slow the drying process and those pieces didn’t crack at all.
Thanks to the experimentation, I knew I would be able to mold and clean these pieces a couple of days in advance. That took a lot of stress off in the end. Pre-baking is the way to go!
Goblets…Or Not
My initial intention was to serve up this chess game in progress with two goblets and a bowl of fruit on a pretty tray. I have worked with sugar and made goblets before and thought that they would be a nice touch. I used Isomalt, which is made from beet sugar and is really easy to work with. As long as you have a microwave safe bowl you can warm it up in 30 second increments and reheat when necessary. I added two drops of commercial blue dye and one drop of green to get a blue glass color as the clear of the Isomalt wasn’t very pretty. However, nothing went as planned. Also, I had forgotten what a disaster sugar work makes of my kitchen.
Balloons Are a Bust
Apparently there are variations on balloons. Quality, regularity of shape, etc. I tried on three separate occasions and went through so many balloons. Silly of me, I forgot that the hot sugar made the air expand in the balloon the first time and while I tried to keep the balloons small but no matter how little I inflated them the first round of balloons only produced larger bowl shapes. Too large to be used for goblets. I also ran into trouble with the balloon inflating so much with the hot sugar applied that I had a hard time rolling the balloon around in the dish with melted sugar.
The second round produced a couple of potential goblets. Unfortunately one cracked when I removed the balloon and the other was too thin and cracked in the cooling process. My third attempt, made a day later, produced two thick and uneven bowls among a variety of failures. Frustrated, I decided that my goblets would be bowls, and they would be filled with fresh fruit and whipped cream. Stressing myself out was only resulting in more mistakes, so I opted to end there.
Project Completion
Our completed project came together well, though there are few things that I would change in the process. The cookie board build I think we would have toyed with a bit more, if only to see if we could get the pieces any more square and I would have liked to play with the dyes and their concentration. But, as Mistress Eleanore says, “80% of plan is still a plan” and all the elements were there, if not in their originally conceived forms and overall it was well received.