Anyone fancy an eyeball ?
I had a blast making these up this afternoon. From the moment I thought of the idea, I just knew that my little boy (Oliver) would adore them.
Oliver has his 5th birthday coming up, and his party will be on 27th October - which is rather close to Halloween. I rather like the idea of potting up these edible eyeballs with some green gummy jelly in pots for his party bags and perhaps filling a chocolate skull with them too.
"Oh WOW - you're the coolest Mummy I know !", Oliver declared on the way home tonight. I'm guessing that means that he likes this idea..... Certainly made me giggle !
Might be even better with red goo in the middle. Deeeelicious !
Want to know how to make them ?
You will need :
gel paste food colouring (I used black, blue and green). I prefer Wilton gel pastes as they dissolve easily in water, whereas some of the others don't.
cocktail sticks
piping bag - I use these disposable 18" ones for this (you can wash out and re-use...)
4 x 15 cell bonbon (semi sphere) silicone bakeware moulds (or do a smaller batch and use two)
sugar thermometer
sugar thermometer
cake release spray - or sunflower / vegetable oil
2 or 3 plastic 3ml pipettes (or small, empty syringe - available from chemist shops)
INGREDIENTS - makes 30 eyeballs ( and a little spare mallow)
FOR A SMALLER BATCH, MAKE HALF THE RECIPE VOLUME
pack of Gelatine granules. I used Dr Oeteker.
300g sugar
2 egg whites
water
some flavouring (vanilla extract, essences or Lor-Ann candy oils)
Make sure your flavourings are CLEAR.
PUPILS AND IRISES
Prepare your 4 x 15 cell semi sphere silicone bakeware molds by spraying with cake release spray, or oil using a vegetable oil on some kitchen roll. Marshmallow is the stickiest stuff you can imagine. If any of the mould is not properly prepared, the marshmallow WILL stick to it !
Put 50g of sugar and 100g or mls of boiling water into a jug. Stir to dissolve.
Set aside until luke warm, then sprinkle over a sachet of gelatine granules and stir well.
Pop this in the microwave, and cook in short bursts. Once the gelatine is all dissolved into the sugar solution, it is ready to use.
Pour about 1/3 of this into a separate bowl. Use a cocktail stick to add some black food colouring gel paste and mix well. The colour needs to be strong - not wishy washy - for the desired effect.
Using a pipette or syringe, put 3 drops of the black gelatine solution in 30 of the cells.
Take the remaining solution and colour it as desired for the iris. You may want to split into two or three batches for multiple colours.
Do not worry if it is setting hard too fast. You can zap it again in the microwave.
The gelatine mixure needs to be warm and very fluid. If you start getting lots of bubbles on top of the solution after piping, it may be getting too cool.
Do make sure it's also not too hot - as we don't want the colours to bleed into each other.
By the time you have put black solution in for all the pupils, the first ones will have set. Go ahead and put approx 2mls of your coloured solution over the top of the set black gel.
It will now look like this....
The next stage is to make the marshmallow. This is a stronger / little more dense marshmallow than my normal recipe, as I want the eyeballs to stay intact even if subject to quite a lot of handling. As a result, it WILL start to set up on you quickly once mixed - so you need to work fast.
MARSHMALLOW
Put 500g of sugar and 250g of water in a large, heavy based pan
Put the sugar thermometer in, and turn on the heat. DO NOT STIR.
The sugar needs to stay on the heat and boil until it gets to 120deg C
Put 125ml of cold water in a cup or bowl and add 3 sachets of gelatine granules. You can add flavouring to this as desired. I used 5 drops of Blackcurrant Lorann Candy Oil (use a pipette - it's strong stuff... Stir well and set aside....
When the sugar syrup gets to about 110deg C, whip the egg whites to firm peak.
Remove sugar syrup from heat at 120deg C. Allow a few seconds for the bubbles / boiling to subside, then stir in the gelatine granules mix and dissolve.
Using a hand mixer on highest speed, whip the egg whites whilst pouring in the hot sugar syrup mix. It will be really soupy to start with. Whip hard and fast until thickening and increasing in volume. It needs to remain pourable.
Transfer into an 18" disposable piping bag. Snip a tiny bit off the end, and then pipe the mallow into all 60 cells, until level with the top of each cavity.
That's it !
Leave alone for a couple of hours, undisturbed.
Carefully, place one mould with the pupils and irises on top of a mould with just plain mallow cells - carefully making sure they line up.
Press down gently on the top of each cavity, to make sure the bases of each mallow stick together.
When the top mould is removed, you'll have eyeballs just like these !
Lightly oil your hands with vegetable or sunflower oil (or cake release spray).
Remove eyeballs from mould. The small amount of oil on your hands will stop the mallows sticking to you or anything else. These can now be potted up with some jelly in little pots as I did, put onto lolly sticks (dip stick in chocolate first), eaten as is, or frozen for future use.
I so want to make a specimen jar full of eyeballs and jelly worms !
Emma and Oliver loved them !
Happy Halloween when it comes .....
Sarah-Jane Nash, www.siliconemoulds.com - 10/10/13
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