to November and the Dias de Los Muertos (or Day of the Dead). It's a holiday in Mexico and several other countries where the people remember and honor their ancestors by making sugar skulls, bringing flowers, and taking food to their ancestors' graves. Really I just wanted to make the cool sugar skulls, but it's a good way to get teens interested in another culture.www.mexicansugarskull.com was a pretty good resource, but can
be pricey if you’re only doing a small group. My coworker found a kit through Hearth Song, and it was fantastic! We bought the party pack and it was more than enough for our programs. I probably have enough meringue powder to do it next year too! We had to do this program for two weeks – 1 week to mold the skulls and another to decorate them. The skulls take a day or two to dry, so that’s why we had to do it in two sessions.
The recipe for sugar skulls is pretty basic. 1 tsp of meringue powder, 1 cup of granulated sugar. Mix together and slowly add water a bit at a time until it feels a bit like sand at the beach. Not really wet, but enough that it can mold together. Pack the sugar mixture into molds, and turn over onto a piece of cardboard or mat board. Leave out to dry. Unfortunately, the day I did this with my teens it was raining, so the skulls were already doomed to not dry properly. In addition, we had a mouse in our building at the time, so I had to take extra steps to ensure the skulls couldn't be nibbled by our little invader. Needless to say, the skulls didn't turn out and I had to make new ones before we decorated them the next week. You may want to skip molding them with the kids and just do it yourself.
The skulls are decorated with royal icing, and my teens had a blast doing this. Of course, they also had a ball decorating cakes this summer (which I will blog about later), so it really shouldn't have been any surprise. Big hit, a lot of fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone.
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