Sugar Mold Saturday

Carolee from Autumn Mom - Patches of Godlight had recently made some sugar molds. Well, I have seen these sugar molds everywhere and I of course wanted to try my hand at them. I asked Carolee how to go about making them and it seemed quite simple so I tried my hand at it today. I was at Wal-Mart today and noticed that they had some mini fluted pans on clearance and I thought they would be perfect for my sugar molds. So, I put them in the cart and grabbed some cheesecloth and I was on my way. I coffee stained my cheesecloth and put it into the oven and while I was waiting for it to dry I started my molds. The recipe is very easy and now they are in the process of drying. I have to allow them to dry for 48 hours and then brush them lightly with my coffee water and let them dry for another 24 hours and then they should be complete. The stained cheesecloth will look perfect with my sugar molds once they are complete. Here is a picture of my cheesecloth that I stained and my sugar molds are right below. I like the fluted pan molds, but I also like the tall slender ones as well. Believe it or not..... I used my son's sippy cup to make the tall slender molds. So, do you have a favorite over the other? Let me know your thoughts because I would love to know. Just in case you are interested, the sugar mold recipe is below.

Sugar Mold Recipe

You take white sugar and brown sugar in a 4:1 ratio (4 cups of white, 1 cups of brown or some variation of that) and mix them together well with a fork. Next you take a 1/4 cup of cool water and put about 1 Tbsp. of instant coffee in it. Then with your finger tips you dip and sprinkle a little of the water mixture into the sugar mixture and with a fork work the water in well. Keep adding more water until you when you squeeze a handful of the mixture and open your hand it stays nicely formed. Generally it only take three or four sprinkles. Next put the sugar into a form of some kind. A tall glass works nicely. Press it in firmly. Invert and tap lightly to remove the sugar mold onto a plate. Put the plate somewhere out of the way and leave it for 48 hours. After it is well harden, take a paintbrush and brush the outside of the sugar mold with the left over coffee water, if you want that darken, grungy appearance. Paint as little coffee stain on as necessary to get the look you want but not enough to soak the mold. Let it dry again for 24 hours and your are good to go. For the taller molds, wrapping it in coffee stained cheese cloth makes the molds look more authentic