Happy Day of the Dead

We decorated Day of the Dead sugar skulls at Enrichment at church this month, and I finally got around to icing the leftovers. I wrote the names of our dead loved ones (thankfully few--I ran out of names before I ran out of skulls), and kind of went nuts with the intensely-colored icing. Did you know royal icing is still usable even after two+ weeks if it's sealed in a pastry bag?


Making them is not hard--just buy the molds (I ordered my first one online, but I bought the rest for less at a local fair trade import store) and follow the instructions. Then make royal icing (again following the instructions) and use gel food coloring to get bright colors. I had disposable plastic pastry bags, but you could easily use zippered bags and just snip a tiny corner to squeeze the icing out. I put coloring in each bag, the divided the icing, sealed the bag, and kneaded the color in until no streaks remained.


Mavis and I attended a Day of the Dead party. We thought of a few costumes that would have been more Day of the Dead-ish, but at the last minute decided on Zeus (complete with foil-covered cardboard lightning bolt) and Hera. (The fact that Zeus' eyes are closed in the picture was not apparent when I looked at the picture on the camera.)