Candy Molds, Cupcakes and Showers...

OH MY!!!

Kimberly and I (along with Kerry's friend, Donna) had the privilege of hosting a baby shower for Kerry. Since they have decided on an ADORABLE jungle animal theme for the nursery, we made the theme of the shower Jungle Animals (of course).

Let me make a quick note that Kerry is our creative and highly artistic sister. She is the one we rely on for awesomely decorated cakes so-forth... Kimberly and I had to DIG DEEP!!!!

Kimberly found jungle animal candy molds (from Wilton) at Michaels. They have a whole aisle dedicated to cake decorating and candy making- some expensive, so very affordable. If you have never worked with candy making before (like me) I would say that this was VERY easy (time consuming, but easy)

Kimberly and I took pictures during our candy making session because Kimberly wanted me to write a blog about it! So here it goes:

As you can see here, I have placed a heated griddle pan on our counter. We melted the color candy pieces in small ceramic and glass bowls in the microwave and kept them heated by placing them on the griddle pan. This was a WONDERFULLY USEFUL tip that I read online. It worked great!

There were 2 sets of 4 animals on each mold (a total of 8 animals). The Lion had the most layers (4 total). Then the Monkey and Bear had 3 layers, and the elephant was the easiest with 2 layers. And by layers I mean, we painted a color, let it set, painted another color let that set etc.

After all the layers had set (we determined it took about 10 minutes for each layer to set). We popped them out of the mold and put the finishing touches (eyes, mouths, ears).

All in all it took us a lot longer than we "guesstimated". But the end result was WELL WORTH it!

Another tip would be if you have any left over melted candy, you can re-harden it as we have here: