These sugar cubes are so awesome! A few of you may have seen me pin the
original sugar cube tutorial here. Can you say genius! When Lu was 2 she helped me make gum paste flowers for a cake and she absolutely loved the process. Heck, it was basically like playing with playdough! She still talks about how much she loved making them. When I saw these sugar cubes I knew that she would love to make them, but I feared that they would be so hard to make. It turns out they are just sugar and water. Amazing, huh? Lu loved making, decorating, and then using them to decorate her birthday cake. They made the perfect addition for
Lu's tea party too!
It turns out though that these guys were almost a disaster. Ready to hear why and hear some hints about how to make them?
My first batch looked like this. Melted sugar cubes are no bueno...let me tell you.
So it was back to the
instructions. You are supposed to mix sugar with a tiny bit of water, pound it together, cut out your flowers, and then pop them in the oven for 10 minutes. The first time I put them in the oven they all melted though. Total bummer!!
I did two things to remedy the melting. First, I added a whole lot more sugar to the mixture. There's no amount of sugar to water ratio to add in the original post, so I think my original problem was that I had WAY too much water. You want it to be mostly sugar, ok? It will fall apart and be really crumby. It's ok. I promise. It should look like this.
I pounded it out with my hands, and then used a small cookie cutter to cut out the flowers. I think you need a relatively simply shape. I had a flower with much narrower petals and it was very difficult to cut complete flowers. You can also dye the sugar by adding a bit of food coloring.
Then it was oven time. I watched my sugar cubes like a hawk once I put them in the oven. The minute I saw any liquid droplets (like in the picture below) I pull them out immediately. In later batches I reduced the cook time to 8 minutes so no droplets formed.
Here are all of my cubes out of the oven! Ready to decorate! We used
food coloring markers to decorate the flowers. Lu loved this part!
Pretty, pretty! And fun too!
What was the oven temp that you used? These would be great for afternoon tea!
ReplyDelete200 degrees F.
DeleteI used regular food coloring and put a drop on it. This was a mistake. It spread and colored almost the entire sugar cube. My tea water turned blue. I think next time I'll just leave it plain white.
ReplyDeleteMy kids put the just colored centers flowers into their lemonade without major color changes, but I'm guessing that the more dye you use the more of a problem this will be. We used the totally purple ones as decorations on my daughters' cake, so I don' think we ever put them in liquid. Thanks for sharing your experience!
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ReplyDeleteI have made many shapes. I can tell the oven is not needed just make the shape with the help of stencil or mold whatever is handy and then put is side to dry overnight. It becomes hard by itself. Yours are very very pretty I love to see them. It's just in India and in Marathi family at the time of wedding these sugar shapes is one of the attractive things you make and give them to bride to take with. It's kind of art show. If we are from bride's side we make. If we are from bridegrooms side we get them as gift and children eat them. It's a traditional thing we love.
ReplyDeleteThat's wonderful! Thank you for sharing Sudeshna! I love the idea of a sugar shape art show!
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