Hooray for Candy Clay!

My house will be invaded by characters from the Street next week.  Specifically, they'll be on a cake.  I have worked a lot with fondant, but it can get quite expensive and I've gotten feedback that it doesn't taste so great.  So to sculpt all the critters that will be on the cake, I decided to try candy clay.  You can find the recipe here.  It's recommended that you make it a day ahead and harden overnight; I did all the melting and stirring yesterday.

Looking at the hardened piles of chocolate, I wasn't sure they'd behave the way I need them to.  You can see the white chunk in the center and the chocolate pile on the far left.  This afternoon I cut a chunk off the dark chocolate circle and sure enough, the heat from my hand made it start to squish.  It seemed a little dry, but still rolled nicely into the tree trunk on the left.  I used a butterknife to carve in some lines to make it look like bark.

The white behaved much better, I think because I put a couple of drops of strawberry flavored oil in the melted chocolate before I added the corn syrup.  It kneaded to a pliable consistency much quicker, and had a pretty shine to it.  I made all the colors in the picture using Wilton Candy Colors except the blue.  I didn't realize it until I dumped all the jars onto the table, but I got shafted when I bought the Primary Color Set from the store.  Someone swapped a red for the blue, so I have no blue candy coloring.  Fortunately you can still color candy clay with icing color, and so I used Wilton Royal Blue for the last chunk.  The black took a lot of color, but I started with a piece of chocolate clay so I got a nice black.

I tried to start the grouch, but the clay quickly got too warm to work with.  Instead, I decided to make all the colors I would need and let them sit for a few hours.  I think you can also put them in the fridge to set back up.  Anyhow, this is my project for the week.  Whenever free time allows, I'll be attempting to make small furry creatures out of candy.  And hope hope hope I get them done by Friday night.