October really begins the holiday season! While our Holiday Head Start series was aimed at adults, we still wanted a workshop for both the young and the young at heart, so we decided to host Spooky Treats, a sweet, fun workshop for all ages! Spooky Treats attracted candy-makers of all ages, and everyone had a blast!
Spooky Treats began with colorful painted chocolate molds. Borrowing from one of our perennial favorite workshops, Painting With Chocolate, we used brightly colored white chocolate to decorate the inside of creepy molds—everything from spider webs, to mummies, witch’s fingers, jack-o-lanterns and moustaches! When candymakers were done, they brought their molds into the kitchen where they got to watch it be filled with dark chocolate and put a lollipop stick in their mold before it was popped into the refrigerator to cool—so much fun!
We wrapped the chocolates in plastic wrap hoping they’d make it home, but few did!
Next up were chocolate mice, treats as creepy as they were sweet! Appropriately, a group of mice are sometimes called a “mischief,” and we made chocolate mischief of our own! We dipped sweet maraschino cherries in dark chocolate before putting them on parchment paper and attaching a Hershey’s Kiss nose and almond ears! Our mischief of chocolate mice cooled alongside our chocolate molds in the refrigerator while we decorated our sugar skulls.
Eek! Chocolate Mice as spooky as they are sweet!
Sugar Skulls are decorations found during Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead Festival traditionally celebrated in Mexico. Despite its intimidating name, Dia de los Muertos is a bright, colorful, and happy celebration of life and loved ones who have passed on. Sugar skulls are often brightly decorated with icing, brightly colored foils, sequins, and other adornments and traditionally pay homage to deceased loved ones. We began making our sugar skulls several weeks before the workshop, molding our sugar skulls and then gluing them together using royal icing. Participants decorated their sugar skulls with brightly colored royal icing and we were impressed with the designs that they dreamed up!
We were both happy (and quite full of chocolate!) by the end of Spooky Treats. We would like to thank our participants of all ages for coming to the Museum on a chilly Sunday afternoon and making this event such a success. Additionally, we would like to thank MexicanSugarSkulls.com for their guidance as to how to construct our sugar skulls! Keep an eye out for future candymaking workshops at the Museum!
The Headley-Whitney Museum 