I added some more "gold" to the nest before it was served, and the ramikin supporting the wings got removed as well as more mint being added, but you get the general idea.
The griffin itself is made from a honey marzipan. As it was mostly being used for sculpting and not much eating was going to happen, I used bulk almond flour rather than grinding my own. The colors were added with Wilton cake decoration dyes. The bluish things to the left are supposed to be roses. They didn't look too bad in person, but I was unhappy with the color. The queen on the throne at the time was anti-red roses. White wasn't working and the griffin was already yellow, so I tried for a pale blue hoping to have it look like a shadowed white and it just didn't work. The beak did look a great deal less ducklike and more eagleish from the side as well.
The gold (as griffins guard their nests of gold according to myth,) was candied lemons I'd made (very tasty,) purchased dates, shortbread cookies stamped with the Provincial device, candied chestnuts (soooo yummy,) and lemon curd tarts (you can just glimpse a couple of them under the mint up top.)
While I was running around like a madwoman getting feast done there was a shortage of A&S entries. Since I had documented several of the recipes for the comfits and crazy marzipan sculpting is totally period, this got entered at the last minute with a combination of verbal documentation and what I had written out for the recipes, and I won Provincial A&S Champion. My oldest daughter also did a little competing of her own and became the Province of Arrows Flight's bard.Just to add to the crazy of the day, here's me getting my Golden Pillar (Artemisian AoA level service award.) I'm exhausted just thinking about it, and I'm just over a week out from doing another feast. Now, I better get back to making bread and prepping desserts. The weather is perfect for baking.
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