31 Days of Halloween!(+1!) Nov 1 - Day of the Dead

Make: Skulls!
Recipe: Krispy Treat Skulls!
Made:Skulls!



Make: Day of the Dead Skulls

Recipe: Rice Krispy Treat Skulls and Skull Cake

Made: Leather Day of the Dead Masks

~> The first recipe I'm posting for Day of the Dead is crispy rice treat skulls! Information about the skull cake will be posted second.



~~> Recipe: Rice Krispy Treat Skulls

Most of this recipe follows a regular rice krispy treat recipe!
Basically, the differences are that you smash up the rice krispies before you start and you mash them in to skull molds instead of a pan! (you can do this with any firm mold and they are great used as cake toppers or individual treats)
ONE batch would fit a 13x9x2 inch pan.


Ingredients:
Rice Crispy Treat 
3 Tsp butter OR margarine
1 package (10 oz., ~40) regular marshmallows OR 4 cups miniature marshmallows
5 1/2 cups crispy rice cereal (a bit less makes for a denser cast of the skull, can decrease to 5 cups)
Decoration (optional)
fondant/sugar paste or marzipan
melting chocolate
sanding sugar
sprinkles


Crush the rice cereal a bit in a heavy food bag (a freezer bag works fine); you can use a rolling pin or the back of a wooden spoon). Smaller pieces make for more detail in your castings of your food molds! (and make the treat much more dense!)
Use a light baking spray on your mold pan (I used the Wilton  3-D mini skull baking pan as a press mold).
Use a large saucepan (a paella pan or wok also works great ; ) to melt butter on low heat, add the marshmallows, and stir until melted in.
Add your crispy rice cereal and stir until evenly mixed and well coated.
Use wax paper or a buttered spoon/spatula to press mixture into molds (or you could lay it out on aluminum foil and cut it with cookie cutters).
Allow to cool.
These are best if served the same or the next day. If you need to hold them you can freeze them between layers of wax paper for up to 6 weeks.


~~> Recipe: Skull Cake

There are (at least) two good 3-D baking molds for "full sized" skulls available: Wilton and NordicWare. The Nordic Ware pan has a more complete skull shape, with the back of the skull being more rounded, but may be harder to find. Wilton also has a 3-D mini skull baking pan with molds for 4 complete smaller skulls which are great for baking or using as a press mold.
Prep baking mold (grease / lightly flour).
Fill with any standard cake recipe or mix (The recipes and mixes we have used are given here).
Allow to cool and remove from mold pan, breaking the edge of the cake/pan border with a butter knife.
After the cake has cooled, cut the un-molded edges flat and spread some frosting thinly across both facing edges to "glue" together.
Gently frost the cake. Using the Wilton mold I tend to frost the base differently than the skull.
Then pipe decoration. You can use a small plastic food bag with a tiny corner snipped off for piping.


~~~> Made:

  

           

  

Enjoy! 
 
DeWyk

31 Days of Halloween! Day7- Make: Basic Earrings

There are a lot of different ways to make basic earrings, and a lot of ways to make interesting seasonal earrings in general. They are simple to make with wire.....

Some things we find helpful for making basic Halloween earrings (suggested supplies):

- Halloween-themed beads or small pendants.

- Wire (~16 gauge)
- Chain
- Pliers (small)
- Wire cutters
- Earring hooks or posts
- Small filler beads (glass seed beads work great)



First decide how you want the earrings to look:


long and dangly?

mix-and-match?

cute?



















skulls and bone?

All of these earrings are simple to make, but we'll use the "skulls and bone" style immediately above as a template for instructions.

1. Get some small bone beads that are carved to look like skulls, and other bone beads or glass seed beads in shapes and colors that you think will go well with the skulls. (In the above three earring sets, the only beads that are not bone are the little black seed beads in the last image.)
2. Get a small copper head pin, or flatten the end of a piece of copper wire and slide a skull bead onto it. Alternately, you can make a loop at the end of the piece of wire instead of flattening it so you can dangle another bead or charm below the skull.
3. Make a loop in the wire above the skull. I recommend using a pair of ring nosed pliers to make the loops. At this point you should have a skull bead on a wire with a loop on each end.
4. Get another small piece of wire, make a loop at the bottom of it like in step 2, and slide a few beads onto it to make the upper portion of the earring. Make a loop above this stack of beads too. The wire should look just like the wire with the skull on it, only with beads on it instead!
5. Attach an earring hook to the top loop of the wire with the beads on it. This is the top of the earring.
6. Make small rings (again, using the ring nosed pliers) and attach as many of these as desired between the bottom loop of the wire with the beads on it and the top loop of the wire with the skull.
7. If desired, you can also attach a couple of rings, or a ring with a bead slid onto it to the loop below the skull.
8. Try the earrings on, see if you're finished! :)

Enjoy! 
 
DeWyk