1up Mushrooms (continued)

Now On To Business

WARNING: Read through this recipe and the CCM recipe at least once before cooking!

You are going to do just about everything the same up until you reach the Piping Your Mush(rooms) stage. The only additional things that need to be done before then are to make sure that your food coloring is easily accessible, and that you prepare the second piping bag as well. Now, it’s piping time!

Piping Your Mush(rooms) Redux
Getting your gel into the piping bag should be roughly the same as in CCM, but in this case, you’re going to only remove enough of the gel to make the stems. If you’re going by my ratio, that’s about 1/3 of your gel. The reason you do this is to allow you to use the mixer to nice and evenly mix the food coloring into the remaining gel, aka the caps. So in this case, you have no choice but to make your stems first. One last note before making the stems: these are shaped and used differently from the CCM stems; you want to be sort of cones that you will then flatten the top of, and when you stick them onto the caps, you will actually place them upside-down in comparison to how they were placed on the CCM’s, resulting in stems with smaller bases that stalks. So once you have the bag ready and loaded, here’s what you (or your helper) should do:
1. Place the piping tip about ¼ inch above the cookie sheet, and very gently squeeze the bag (from the top down) DSC6242.
2. Gently raise the bag/tip about ¾ inch while still squeezing, creating the stalk. You’re aiming for a roughly conical shape here, as opposed to the footed shape used in CCM’s.
Now just repeat these steps until you’ve used up all of your gel. Once you’ve used all of it up, place the piping setup aside and grab your spoon. Like when CCM’s, you’re going to wet the spoon to just the right amount to allow it smooth the gel without getting it soggy or sticking to it. But instead of smoothing down the top of caps, you’re going to be flattening the “tops” (the eventual bottoms) of the stems. So simply use the wet spoon to shape your stems into what could be described as a cylinder with a smaller top. This doesn’t have to be perfectly flat, but if you can get it pretty flat, your mushrooms may be able to stand on their own!
While somebody is doing the above process, somebody else needs to be preparing the gel for the caps. This is what to do:
1. Using the rubber spatula, scrape all of the gel into a pile in the middle of the bowl, and then create a little pit in the middle of said pile.
2. Using your 2 cocktail forks (or equivalent tool/tools), scoop out a pretty big glob of food coloring. Ultimately you’re aiming for around ¼ teaspoon of it (which is a pretty big amount when it comes to food coloring).
3. Dump this blob of food coloring into the little pit you made in the gel. Keep adding more until you get about ¼ teaspoon (a little less is fine, probably not more though) of food coloring into the pit. Set your food coloring and related tools aside.
4. Using the rubber spatula, fold a blob of gel over and on top of the pit, cover the food coloring. Do not mix!
5. Put the bowl back into the electric mixer, and mix it on high. Periodically stop and scrap down the sides and bottom of the bowl to get all the gel into the center so that it mixes evenly. Once you have a good even tone (for the most part at least), you can put the gel into your second piping bag and pipe your caps just like in the CCM recipe, or differently if you want them to be different, whatever you planned on doing.
Once you’re done piping your caps, just set the bag off to the side. Now it’s time to smooth the caps, but it’s a little different this time. Because the caps have food coloring in them, that means they most likely (it depends on what brand of coloring I suppose) have a water-based coloring agent in them that will run with water. That means that if you get too much water on your caps the color will run and look weird. To avoid this, here is what you do:
1. Get your plate, and put just enough water on it so that it forms little puddles. Dip your index finger into one of these puddles, and give it a shake or two (just to get any large droplets off).
2. Using your finger, gently smooth down the caps to make that nice dome shape. You may need to use a sort of swirling motion to get it completely smooth.
After just one cap, your finger will likely be too dry and start to stick instead of smooth; just get it wet again and keep going until all of your caps are done.
Now that everything piped and smoothed, put your caps and stems into the over for 2 hours just like for CCM’s. Let them cool etc, and then move onto the (modified) chocolate step below.

The Chocolate Redux
Ok, this is it, the most painfully time-consuming step in the process: putting on the chocolate spots. Melt the white chocolate just like regular chocolate, and then figure out who is going to do what job: one person needs to be the spotter (the person who applies the spots, get it? Corny for the win), and the other needs to be the smoother (to smooth out the inevitably unsmooth chocolate). Here’s what the two of you do:
1. Spotter: Grab a cap, and using your brushing tool, put a single spot on it. If you’re going for the 5-spot pattern (where you have one spot on top and four going around the sides; this is the original design of the mushrooms), start with the spot on the top. How you apply the spots really depends on your tool, but you definitely don’t want a tail of chocolate to fall onto the rest of the cap. However, a tail of chocolate within the spot is pretty much unavoidable. Once you’re done spotting the cap, place it back down onto the cookie sheet, so that the Smoother can pick it up easily
2. Smoother: Now that the Spotter has put a spot onto a cap, your goal as Smoother is to use a wet finger (just like when smoothing the caps before they went into the oven) to smooth the tail into a nice smooth spot on the cap of the mushroom. Don’t worry about making the spot perfectly blend into the side of the mushroom or about being completely even: as long as you have a decently round shape and no big blobs or creases, it will come out fine.
Repeat these steps until you get through all of your caps. Once you’ve done one spot on every cap, go back to your first cap and put another spot or two on it, going in the order that you originally spotted your caps so as to give the chocolate the most time to “dry.” If you’re doing the 5-spot pattern, all of your top spots should be done now, so next you should probably do two opposite side spots. Regardless of how you’re doing your spots, keep doing this process until you have enough spots that you’re satisfied.
Now that your caps are all spotted, it’s time to paint the eyes (if you want to). Get out your black food coloring and your microbrush, and do this:
1. Dip the microbrush into the food coloring just enough to get the majority of the brush tip coated (not submerged!).
2. Pick a side of a stem and use the microbrush to paint a simple little line down it. I recommend looking over the stem and finding a side that is nice and smooth if your stems have developed any cracks.
3. Now dip the brush again, and paint another little line down next to the first, making long skinny little eyes just like in the game. You can try to aim for rounded edges, but it doesn’t matter too much.
When painting the eyes, don’t be afraid to deviate a little for more expression, or if there is a particularly interestingly shaped stem that could result in something like a facial expression, go for it.
Now that your stems and caps are decorated, you need to let them dry. This will take at least a few hours, but I let mine go overnight. The next morning, I joined my stems to my caps, but this time, I did it a little different:
1. First, make a match between all of your stems and caps, picking a fitting stem for each cap.
2. Pick up a stem in one hand, and the appropriate cap in the other, and dip the flat side (the side that was touching the parchment paper during baking) into the chocolate, getting just enough on to cover that side of the stem.
3. Attach the now chocolate-y side of the stem to the flat side of the cap, creating a mushroom. If you’re going for the authentic look (using the 5-spots pattern), then the eyes should be facing the same direction as one of the side spots.
4. Set the mushroom stem-up to dry, just like in the CCM recipe.
Now give these another hour two to dry, and you’ll be set!

Cleanup Tips Redux
For the most part, the same tips apply as with CCM’s, but with one exception: letting things soak in the mixing bowl will likely stain them, as the water will be all green from food coloring.