Sugar Sugar - Sprinkles on baked goods style!

Sugar, ah, honey, honey
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you
Honey, ah, sugar, sugar
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you

(lyrics from Sugar, Sugar by Archies) 

 

I made cupcakes for the first time ever in my life last week! ... no not from scratch but from a cake box mix ... still counts! I wanted to make Breaking Bad themed cupcakes for the season premier.

 

 

I needed blue course rocky sugar sprinkles and I couldn't find the desired sizes Nor was I going to pay $3.00 for a pink lid container of sprinkles. Mind you it was $3.00 for only ONE color and if I wanted the multi color sprinkles for future projects it was at least $5.00. No way jose! 

 

LIGHT BULB moment!!! There is a type of Chinese sugar used to make desserts. It is called Rock Sugar. It is course, multipurpose and costs no more than $2.00 a box. However, you do need food coloring. A person really only needs 3 colors of food coloring: red, blue and yellow. All the colors of the rainbow can be mixed from these 3 primary colors. Food coloring is a tad pricey but I chose to invest in it because it can be used for all types of projects, requires only a drop for each project and it piratically lasts forever. Even tho they have a fancy lid I still store mine in zip lock bags to prevent evaporation. 

Rock Sugar can be purchased from any Asian super market. 

 

The photo below shows how the box looks like and yes that lump between the can of Red Bull (for size comparison) is the largest lump of sugar that came out of the box I brought. Its hammer time!!! Place the lump of sugar in between two towels and go at it. This way you can control the size of sugar lumps and sprinkles you want. Place the pieces of sugar into a bowl and drip one drop of food coloring into it and mix mix mix. I used a fork to sieve out the bigger pieces from my cupcakes.

DIY Natural Stain

I had a little DIY project a couple of weeks ago that involved a small $2.00 wooden treasure chest from the dollar store. One of those paint it or decorate it yourself mini projects. I needed it for a pirate themed gift box. However, the freshness and newness of the box is not pirate-y what so ever. It needed to be distressed, charred, aged looking. Wood stain isn't cheap. A small little thing of wood stain costs more than $5.00 and I was only going to use a tiny bit and I knew the remaining bit will forever sit in the garage forgotten.

How did people back in the day do it?! TEA!!!! I remember I had a box of tea bags in the back of my kitchen cupboard since I don't know when. I was pretty sure the tea does not taste the way its supposed to anymore and I was not about to digest it. Tea stain is not going to get you cherry wood dark that's for sure but tinted enough to look a little aged.

So I grabbed all the left over tea bags, placed them into a pot and put just enough boiling water to diffuse the tea bags. If you dilute them too much then there is no staining power.

Words of advice if you can **** WEAR PLASTIC GLOVES**** my hands got stained orangey color and smelled like orange pekoe for a day.

I used the tea bags like a sponge and dabbed the wood. It can get a little messy with tea dripping every where so perhaps do it over a sink or a large bowl. I waited for the tea to dry up a little before I repeated the sponging until I got the desired tint I wanted.

Along with the pirate theme I also made a scroll ... pirate map-ish!!!!

Instead of buying a piece of fancy scrap book paper for $0.50 cents or a stack of decorative printer paper that I was only going to use once, I made my own!

I recall seeing kids making pirate maps back in elementary school and I missed out because my parents would not allow me to play with open flames or candles. Now that I am 27 I can finally do it!

I centered what I needed printed on a plain white 8x11 piece of printer paper. Trimmed off the edges ragedy curvy style and dabbed the tea bags on the front and back. I was afraid it might smudge the print but it didn't. The paper will get a little soggy so lay it flat to dry. The picture below shows the color difference the tea bag made and the edging.

I held the edges of the paper about 4 inches above a candle and once the color on the piece of paper started to change I pulled it away. Paper burns fast! Even after pulling the piece of paper away it still continued to darken for a second or two.