test tab3

MIM: Sugar Skulls (for The Day of The Dead)

sugar skulls 1

pamsmakeit

Or in Spanish; Día de Muertos. The day of the dead is a two day celebration; 1st and 2nd of November honouring the dead. One of the things placed on the alters is skulls made from sugar and when I found the most amazing ‘cakelet pan’ during a shopping trip, I knew it needed to be mine!

sugar skulls 1 mice

The pin on the left is an actual recipe for sugar skulls, but I used the second pin, the recipe for sugar mice, because I had a whole bunch of icing and no meringue powder.

Here it is, the fantastic cakelet pan!

DSC_0800

I greased it lightly with butter because it’s a big heavy metal pan thing and I wanted the skulls to come out and look amazing and stuff. Then I followed the sugar mice instructions. I used a whole block of a dark pink and some I’d had left over from another project. I melted them but I didn’t use flavor or colour. I poured them into two skulls, not to the top, just to cover the features.

DSC_0767 DSC_0769 DSC_0770

Pretty much as soon as I’d got all the sugar mix in the skulls, they started to set so I started carving out the middles, so that they wouldn’t be too solid and sickly and would be more like a sugar skull. I put the carved out bits back into the pan. I added another block of icing to the pan, this time it was pale pink and I added some rose flavour and then once it was off the heat I added some granulated sugar to give it a more sugar skull like feel. Then I did the same with that mix that I’d done with the last.

DSC_0772  DSC_0785

I carved that one out quickly too, so that I’d be able to do it with ease – they set quite solid to the best time to do it it when there’s a a crust formed around the outer edge but the middle is still gloopy.

For my last mix I heated it up again but I didn’t add any more icing sugar. It was still rose flavoured so I added some colour to make it different, I tried to make purple but ended up with red. It looks pretty cool though so that’s fine. I also added more sugar and water to help make it go further. What was left only JUST managed to cover the skull details, then what was carved out was formed into sugar mice!

DSC_0786 DSC_0791

Waiting for the red to set enough to carve it out took a little longer than the others, possibly because of extra water in the mix. Then I put it in the fridge and watched Hocus Pocus. Then to get them out, I ended up slamming the tray down on a wooden block. I didn’t want to dammage the tray, so when I ended up using a hammer I hammered through a thick wad of oven glove.

And here they are! The beautiful works of art I never want to spoil by eating:

DSC_0794

CONCLUSION:

I love my pan! I love sugar skulls! I love how well these turned out! I do wish I’d had white icing in the cupboard, as well as some delicate icing tubes so that I could have decorated them. But they are pretty fantastic as they are.

WHEN I do this again, I think I’ll ladel out the sugar mix, not spoon it because the skulls are quite big to fill and they ended up setting even between each spoonful, you can see lines of the skulls:

DSC_0799

I can’t wait to see what else I can make with this pan and I really regret not purchasing the companion pumpkin one!

pamspaein

spacer

Leave a Reply