Sugar Beer Bottles - Page 12

this sounds sooo hard and I have one to do in July

I hope you get it all worked out imartsy

anyone know about the discoloration of the sugar? See my post above....

Anyone?

I've never heard of the bottle being splotchy... what ingredients and how did you cook it?

It's weird - the bottle is fine in color today.... don't know what was up....

However, now I've just made crazy messes with this - I think the sugar is heating up too much or something.... but I'm having trouble getting it dark enough.....

I don't know - I'm thinking of trying to find that other rubber latex stuff and trying to make another mold. I'm just upset and disappointed at the moment at my lack of mold making skills lack of pre-planning (well some of it is due to the bride not sending the bottle or telling me it was easy to get at a local liquor store! - all that time I wasted waiting for what I thought was a "special" beer bottle)

Okay for some reason I am having a hard time loading these pages so if this has already been answered sorry.To the question about making a full bottle out of silicone yes you can. I made a complete bottle and it worked fine. I did not cut it I just stretched it off the bottle. The top neck part was a little distorted but it wasn't really noticeable once I put the label on.
I will try to post the pic of the last one I made. I made a sugar bottle previously without the siliquone plastique but it didn't work as well. It too is a full bottle and is in my pics.
Once again sorry if I am repeating anything but I can't get the pages loaded!

GENERAL LESSONS LEARNED:

1) Ask the customer more questions if you think she's asking for something that's hard to find

2) Never rely on local stores to have anything. Order everything - double - ahead of time - just in case

3) Make sure you have everything you need ahead of time - including the right cake boards and fanci foil or already covered cake drums

4) Pray a lot

SUGAR LESSONS LEARNED:

1) Put down a baker's mat or silpat or something so that if you spill sugar, it will be okay (It took a long time to get hard sugar off the cabinet doors and counter top

2) DO NOT try to clean up spilt hot sugar with paper towels - big mess!

3) Make your mold very very thick

4) Be very very careful about heating up sugar... do not overheat it - if you have a medium high setting, use that instead of high and just heat it up a little longer.... but watch it carefully. I had sugar boil over the cup it was in and all over everything twice

5) Once you pour the sugar in, you can "roll" the mold around in your two hands - and you can lean it different ways to move the sugar around inside... even though it's very very hot (pot holders are a must!), you don't have a long time to work it into the right spots

6) Next time, try baker's sugar.... I read somewhere that is easy to melt. Also next time if I want a really dark bottle, I need to try to use some candy coloring or something - or do you all think I could use americolors?

I'm sure more lessons learned will come....

Since everyone has been sooooo helpful, I thought I'd post a link to the picture of the final results! The labels are from the actual bottles - as well as the one beer cap. I figured one beer was already drunk, and there was still one to go

  http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1231689.html

I haven't read to the end yet, but does the moisture of the buttercream affect the sugar bottle in any way? I wonder if you put it on the cake the day before, would it last until the event?

Sunlover,

I wouldn't put the bottles on the cake until you set it up at the event. I noticed when I did mine that they seemed to move on the cake when I was driving. Of course the ice on the cake covered those spots but to be safe I would wait to place the bottles.

Teri

imartsy - great cake The bottles are gorgeous.

Imartsy...great cake and bottles. Well done!

When I did my bottles I put the mold in a narrow glass so I didn't have to hold the mold while I poured the sugar in. It helped to rotate the mold in the glass. I did a thin coat all around the mold first then poured more in after to make it a bit thicker. The color darkens as it gets hotter and even after you take it out of the microwave. The longer it cooks the darker it gets but it can burn and smell the place up...boy to I know that!

Teri

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_600673.html

I had no problems at all. I shoved my bottles pretty deep down into the cake (there are no bottoms and the bottle is hollow) - the cake helped hold the bottle in place. I did also put one little dowel rod into a bottle... although I doubt it did anything.

I also stored in the fridge for several hours. It was fine. The bottles got really really sticky - probably from the moisture of the fridge.

However, I didn't use buttercream - I used whipped cream frosting. So there wasn't any shortening/grease in it..... but I don't think the buttercream would affect it at all.

On one of the first few pages, the recipe for the sugar said ? karo syrup and ? water. Does anyone else's screen say that? Does that mean equal parts sugar and water?

I wonder if you used 1/2 light Karo and 1/2 dark Karo syrup, if you'd get a nice dark brown color without having to cook it too long?

Or....is the coloring of the syrup how you know when it's done?

These directions are great. I can't wait to try making bottles. Thanks so much.