Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Post Halloween Post --Blood-Splatter Petit Fours

Hello! We got the blog up and running again and we are back on schedule! This pin that was sent to us by Kelly is really cool, I know it's way past Halloween, but I just couldn't wait till next year to share it! I hadn't seen this one before but now I wish I had because 1) I love a good creepy Halloween treat, and 2) This looks really yummy!!

The Original
 
Don't those look creepy/delicious?! You can see the sugar glaze on the pound cake and I bet it tastes amazing!!
 
Kelly tried these herself, and ran into a few problems, check it out!

 
Here is what she had to say about it,
"I tried to make something for my office Halloween treat contest. I saw this pin for "Blood-Spattered Petit Fours with Sugar Glass" and thought it sounded simple enough.
 
As you can see from the pictures, the "glaze" came out totally clear except for some small sugar lumps. I even made more glaze with extra sugar and re-dipped a few petit fours, but they still dried clear. Also, the glaze soaked into pound cake, giving it a kind of grainy texture when you ate it. 
I had high quality food coloring that I used for cake icing that was pretty thick, so I mixed it with a bit of the corn syrup for the blood. That too soaked into the cake. 
 
Finally, you can also plainly see that I burnt the sugar glass. I was monitoring the temperature very carefully every minute or so. But I turned around for a second and it had shot up and browned within seconds. It tasted ok, just a little caramelized. 
 
The petit fours (which I called "Bloody Fours") still tasted delicious and I still won Most Creative Treat, but it looked nothing like the pin. I know what I did wrong on the glass, but I don't know how I messed up the glaze. 
Also, just fyi to anyone else who makes them. I left them in an airtight container over the weekend and on Monday, most of the glass pieces were gone. Turns out, the pound cake absorbed them as well!"
 
Man it sounds like the pound cake is a sugar black hole! It absorbs everything!
A few things came to mind when reading through all this. I went through the original recipe and didn't see any red flags as far as what Kelly did that may have been different other than what she mentioned about her sugar glass.
One thing that came to mind was that her sugar glaze was ok to soak into the cake, I think the original probably had some of that too, it is somewhat inevitable seeing as cake is porous, also the food coloring soaking in too was alright I thought because the original kind of looks like they are doing that as well. One thing that may have made a difference is temperature, if the glaze and cake were next to a hot oven it may not have had a chance to "set up" and harden a little bit and that may have been one of the causes of it just soaking clear through the cake. I also think that the food coloring coagulating on top is part of the glaze being a little shell-like on top of the cake. I think a hot house will make a difference in recipes like this for sure.
As for the clumps in her sugar glaze I think the easy thing to fix this is to make sure when you put your sugar in to do so slowly, and make sure that any clumps are broken up. Sugar tends to clump up if it gets moisture in the bag/container (it can even get in there if you are using a wet spoon to spoon it out), make sure your container is air tight! Dispersing any clumps is the key to making sure that you don't have ay sugar clumps sitting in your glaze on top of the cake.
Kelly you hit the nail on the head with the sugar glass, it is very temperamental and specific. Leave it in for even a few seconds too long, or too hot and it's going to behave badly. It was a little strange to me that it soaked up into the cake over the weekend, but like I said cake is porous...any ideas as to how this happened readers?? I don't have a ton of experience with sugar glass, does it have specifics that need to be followed after it's cooked as well?
 
Over all I LOVE this pin, it looks delicious, and creepy and would be a cool treat for any Halloween get together! If any of our readers have any further advice here please share!! We love your feedback!
 
Happy Wednesday all! Have a fun and safe Thanksgiving!
 
 
 



4 comments:

  1. The only thing I thought of was that the instructions mentioned a frozen pound cake, although it's hard to tell if it was thawed when they cut it and started coating it with glaze. I wonder if having the cake pieces frozen would help with solidifying the glaze and keeping it from soaking in? Maybe keeping it refrigerated too?

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  2. That sugar glass sure looked real to me....just from brown bottles! I still think she did a great job with the project though; better than I could have done!

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  3. The darkly glass looks like she looted it from an abandoned, haunted and decrepit church. Out in the county.

    It was a dark and stormy night...

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  4. Since the sugar glass is caramel, it needs to be kept away from moisture to stay crisp/solid. Keeping it in an airtight tin by itself would help, but since it is stuck into/stored with a moist syrup-soaked cake, it will probably have taken on the moisture from the cake and turned back into liquid caramel/syrup, which the cake then soaked up.

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