Puffy Paint Experiments

So I was stumbling the craft blogs one day when I came across this tutorial for puffy paints. And I thought that could be a really fun technique for decorating a larger craft. But after months and months I've still not thought of anything to do with it. So I thought I could just try it on a scrap piece of card and see what ideas it gave me.

So here goes. This is just an experiment, so I'm only making a little bit. One tablespoon self raising flour, one tablespoon salt, enough water to make a paste (about 2 teaspoons). And a drop of food colouring. I had orange, so that's what I made. If you're going to do this, I recommend using liquid food colouring instead of the silly gel stuff I'm using. I had to keep adding more and more colouring, but with liquid, you actually can just use a drop.

So, here goes. I painted a smiley face onto the card and microwaved for 10 seconds.

It doesn't look much different, except that it's dry now. I tried another experiment. I painted a line on each of 2 pieces of card but just microwaved one so I'd get a before and after effect.

The one on the left is the one that's been microwaved. Methinks it may have risen marginally. But I still can't think of anything I could use it for. The thought occurs that if we used sugar instead of salt, we could put this stuff on biscuits. So I baked some gingerbread hearts (well it is Valentine's Day).

I made up my sugar puffy paint and added some red food dye that I'd managed to get hold of. It turned out kinda purple thought (the camera is lying to you here). I think that's because it wasn't quite as white as the salt one. I'll deal with sorting out colours another time I think.

I wasn't sure whether to bake my puffy paint or microwave it, so I decided to do both. I took the biscuits out of the oven a few minutes before they were quite ready and applied the sugar mix to half of them. I baked all the gingerbread for another 5 minutes. They came out kinda shiny, and the sugar stuff had risen nicely.

After they'd cooled I painted the remaining cookies and microwaved them for 10 seconds. Then I decided that wasn't long enough and did them for a bit longer. And the microwaved sugar paste burst, so it seems baking is the better option.

The baked and microwaved ones taste exactly the same, and have the same soft, squidgey texture. The microwaved ones just don't look very good. Unless you're making halloween cookies, then bursting sugar paste could look pretty cool. I think this is something I'll work on again until I get the recipe right.