*Bunneh Test Kitchen; not for sale*

Quite a while back, a coworker (who left work to go to culinary/baking school, and keeps a neat blog about the whole thing) sent me a link to a homemade sprinkles recipe/how-to. I was intrigued, but tucked the recipe away and didn’t get around to it until just recently.

A friend had reason to receive cupcakes from me (let’s be honest: it doesn’t take much). Chocolate is her favorite, so I decided to dress that up with some color. We had the kids last weekend, too, so I thought they would have fun helping me out.

First step: sifting and measuring the powdered sugar. I know that measuring by weight is better and all that, but it’s such a HASSLE. *whine whine* So I never do it. This recipe called for 8 oz of sifted powdered sugar, and I decided since Boyfriend recently bought a snazzy kitchen scale, I’d go ahead and give this a try.

My opinion? Took too long. And the sifting took long enough that the scale turned itself off halfway through the process! Ugh!

Next: getting it all mixed up. The resulting batter is very much like glue paste, and difficult to handle. I was grateful for my spatula-paddle attachment.

Separating it into 3 smaller bowls was a goopy challenge. Another opinion – the original page I was sent (not the one I linked above) suggested 3 colors was the best maximum for this size batch. I dutifully followed this recommendation, but later I wished I hadn’t. I feel like I could have done at least 2 more colors, easily.

Getting the sticky pasty goop into pastry bags was yet another challenge. Seriously, guys, this stuff was THICK. I managed as best I could, and taught the kids how to properly hold and squeeze a decorating bag. They did pretty well, though naturally the 4-year-old had more trouble. I had to “re-squeeze and re-twist, please” for her several times during the process.

The batter was so thick, they had to squeeze quite hard and had a bit of a difficult time with it, but they persevered. I put wax paper on my cookie sheets for easier cleanup, and told the kids they could draw things with the paste rather than stick with straight lines. Because that’s boring.

The wax paper turned out to work well for when they ran out of room, too. I just slid that sheet off the pan onto the table, and gave them a new one. And if I hadn’t joined in the fun myself, you’d probably be wondering who the heck I’ve turned into. No fear; here’s my sprinkle-paste art:

Ignore the rogue bit of green paste that made it up near the “K”… I was trying to snap the picture before another “re-squeeze” request came in and didn’t notice it.

Once we finally used up all the paste, I laid the sheets carefully in the oven (just to keep them safe from the cats – the oven was off) and there they stayed for a whole day. The next night, I pulled them out and crumpled up each piece, breaking up the dried paste into sprinkles!

I dumped this colorful mess into a tupperware container and shook it, a lot, to break them up into smaller bits. Then I attempted to fill my sprinkle unicorn; sadly, these sprinkles were much too large to fit through the sprinkle holes in the unicorn. 🙁

Still good for a colorful photo op, though!

I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes, frosted them with happy pink vanilla buttercream, and sprinkled! Result: deliciousness. The homemade sprinkles have so much more flavor than the store-bought ones. It’s not an easy or quick process to make them, but I think I will definitely do it again.