Sprinkles, Jelly Beans and Confectioner's Glaze
Ok, so this post might seem to go a bit overboard, but I was wondering if anyone has a recipe for sprinkles? I can buy natural, organic, vegan sprinkles in a store--and I guess they're not too expensive. I just want to make them I guess. I make everything from as close to scratchas possible...and it seems a bit hypocritical to make sweets from scratch, slaving over icing and things, and then top them off with BOUGHT sprinkles. :o
Anyways.....
I've searched all over with no results! I tried to make them with powdered sugar and water and some other stuff, but it doesnt work out well. (haha, I was thinking if i try it again, next time i'll push the mixture through a "spaghetti" style play-dough mold-thing)
Also, another thing I tried to make was jelly beans (ya know, for traditional easter fare). I've made a lot of candy in the past. I tried it out (using ingredients from a list on the back of a vegan jelly bean package) with mediocre results. I either get too sticky, too gummy, or not crystall-y enough. Not the perfect, yelid-slighty-to-your-bite sugary morsels they should be. Ho hum.....The evil thing about candy making is you need to get the proportions JUST right. And the technique/temperature. (hmm....would jelly beans be at firm ball or hard ball? in between??! Would you boil it first before raising the temperature? Cook the fruit pectin before adding it? Add corn syrup or not? Ton of sugar or just a bit??)
Even if i do get it to be perfect...what do I coat them in?! I've made waxy-coating using parafin wax before. I question the vegan-nis of parafix wax, however, and I haven't been able to find cheap carbanua wax anywhere.
I suppose I could solve all of my problems with a recipe for "Confectioner's Glaze." It's an ingredient in sprinkles, jelly beans, waxy coatings.....What the heck is it and how do you make it?
According to various web sources it has many different forms, not all of them vegan. So I never use products containing it.
Can anyone help me?
I'm afraid I'm not much help, but I just did a quick web search on Confectioner's glaze, and they referred to it as a shellac.
Here's a little of what I found:
Maple Leaf brand glazes are alcohol solutions of various types of food grade shellac. These are available in various concentrations or "LB cuts" which refers to the pounds of the lac resin dissolved in one gallon of alcohol to make a particular cut of glaze.
These glazes are used extensively in the food industry as a natural sealer which improves the general appearance of the product, extends the shelf life, provides good moisture protection and stops the coated product from sticking together when packaged.
Coloured confections coated with Maple Leaf Brand glaze will have greater colour stability and reduced bleeding which is extremely important in cake and ice cream decorations.
as well as this somewhat scary note on how to use it:
After the glaze has been added and mixed through the product, cool dry air should be forced into the pan until the coating is dry and a shiny gloss is obtained. An exhaust fan should be used in the pan to vent the alcohol fumes.
This was the info source if you want to read more - I don't know if this is a vegan source or not, I was just looking for general info about this type of product: http://www.temuss.com/html/food.html
They apparently sell it by huge, commercial tubs full. Altho I am sure that's not what you are looking for, it might give you some idea on how to replace it in your recipes.
BTW: Love your recipes online! You should write your own cookbook!
I think that the essential ingredient in jelly beans is gelatin, hence not something we can do vegan. My only recipe for gumdrops is made from jello gelatin.
I will mention this to you because well, I can. You can play with it. Silken tofu mixed with lemon juice and confectioner's sugar will give you a sort of creme cheez. Think creme cheez filled Danish made healthy with whole wheat pastry flour and tofu cheez filling. Stay on me this week and I'll give you a recipe that I can't locate right now. I have made vegan cheez Danish and OH MY. I have done it with canned blueberry pie filling and cherry pie filling because this was easy and it made a product exactly like that I remembered. I also know that at my house this batch of Danish, all 30 of them, were gone within 15 minutes of coming out of the oven. You bake so much, I know you could find a new use for this stuff and come up with something wonderful.
Suggestion for you for the above...what about making the creme cheez stuff sorta thick and dry, some cornstarch maybe and seeing of you can make a creme filled chocolate cupcake? I don't have the time to mess with it, but I think this would be very very good.
As for sprinkles...I think they are something like royal icing,which contains powdered egg whites. I am not sure what other things would dry hard like that. Obviously, powdered sugar, a vegan fat and water doesn't quite cut it. I'll think about it and see what I come up with. If they didn't need to be so hard and dry, you could use a Wilton cake decorating bag and a tiny tip to pipe them onto wax paper and then freeze them before you use them. They'll set, but they won't really dry. I have never tried to pipe onto wax paper and then put the product in a food dehydrator because fats don't really dehydrate and tend to turn rancid if not refrigerated.
I used the icing in this recipe for my Christmas cookies last year. It started out as a liquid that you could dip the cookies in, and then it would dry to a shiny finish. It was sort of like a thick donut glaze. Maybe if you made it thicker, you could pipe it into sprinkles the way Dragonfly was suggesting.
http://www.johnandkristie.com/archives/2005/10/perfect_sugar_c.html