Sugar Skulls, part 1

[patinagle16]

Last year I dipped a toe in the water of making sugar skulls. This is a wonderful Dia de los Muertos tradition. We had so much fun with it that I decided to invite some friends to share this year.

These aren't food, by the way. They're pure sugar, just decoration.

Making the base skulls is actually pretty unexciting, and they have to be dry before they can be decorated, so today I made some in advance. I used the molds from last year, best molds I could find then, which turned out to be skull sucker molds. (Hmm...good name for a band...Skull Sucker Mold). This year I cut one down to make it easier to slide the skulls onto cardboard for drying.

I made a double recipe with four cups of sugar, four teaspoons of meringue powder, and about seven teaspoons of water. The recipe called for four, but the sugar seemed too crumbly so I kept adding more. The consistency is supposed to be like "moist sand." Pack the sugar into the mold, scrape off the excess with the flat edge of a knife, cover with an index card and flip over, then place on cardboard and slide out the index card. Voila! The double recipe made ten full skulls and one that was almost full (close enough).

I had a little trouble with some of the chins crumbling, but hey. Not everyone has the same chin, right?