Cupcake 6 - Shattered Glass

Cupcake Name:
Shattered Glass

And this is how it went down:
This was one of the ones I was most excited about making. It seemed very technical but it was actually quite simple to create. I used the last of the chocolate cupcake batch to create this morbid sweet treat.

So, according to Lily, Sugar Glass is what they use in the movies instead of real glass. It’s safer and smashes in almost the same way – which is good for the actors and the movie go-er, no loss of action or actors. It is also pretty tasty. To make it, I mixed sugar, water, glucose syrup and cream of tartar in a saucepan until it boiled... That isn’t all though... you have to concentrate kinda hard for the next part. You need a candy thermometer – see, technical – and you must leave it in the saucepan AND stir at the same time AS WELL AS keeping your eye on the temperature. At first, I didn’t think it was working. To make hard snap candy, you have to get the mixture to reach 150 degrees C (which I think is maybe 300ish degrees F) and for a long while (okay, it was like 5 minutes) it was sitting at about 110C. But then, it started bubbling and boiling up like what I imagine lava would look like but obviously not red and a hell of a lot cooler. The temperature rose fairly quickly and got to 150C in about 15 minutes.



From here, I quickly poured the sugar mixture into a aluminium foil lined tray that had been greased with canola oil. Then, I waited...



After about an hour, the candy had become rock hard and had cooled completely. This was where the fun part began – smashing it with a meat tenderiser! And, it totally smashes like real glass!



I frosted the cakes with Vanilla frosting – but again the humidity is around 70% tonight so it started to melt as soon as I took it out of the fridge, I think I’m going to make a much thicker mixture to stop this from happening. However, the melty-ness kinda worked for this cake.

I then stuck a few good shards into each cake and then dripped on my cherry sauce mixture that was used on both Dracula’s Bites and Blood-Stained-Brains. Due to the heat, the sauce just slid right off and pooled at the base of the cake and onto the board they were sitting on, which looked really gruesome and cool.





Wins:
• The candy! I’m so excited that I made candy that actually snapped like it was supposed to. I love my candy thermometer a lot!
• Of course, the cake is full of amazement and deliciousness.
• Just the whole look of it. So disgusting and bloody. I love it.\

Fails:
• Frosting, even though this time around the runny effect looked cool.

What I’d do different if I had my time over:
• Made more chocolate cakes to use all the candy shards I have! What am I going to do with a container full of Sugar Glass?!