Behold the power of cheese … pumpkins

In an earlier post, I offered my tips for baking with silicone molds, since my attempt to mold brownie mix wasn’t an aesthetic success. Because let’s face it: If it doesn’t look good, nobody is going to eat it. However, the threshold for “too ugly to eat” is far higher for foods with chocolate in them.

With these lessons in mind, I tried something that would hold together better in the molds. Behold the power of cheese:

Specifically: mozzarella. I tried cheddar and shredded mozzarella cheese sticks. Neither works. Cheddar is too oily, and cheese-stick cheese is too dry.

Which I knew from reading Hungry Happenings’ post on this very subject, but I went ahead and tried two cheeses that wouldn’t work anyway. That’s just how I roll. The cheddar pumpkins were a greasy mess, not unlike like a teenager’s T-zone, and the cheese-stick cheese pumpkins formed little tumor-like bumps, most likely because “cheese food” isn’t really cheese. See what I mean?

Here’s the good news: When you use freshly shredded mozzarella, the result is picture-perfect. Look how nice these skull-and-crossbones look:

Belongs to Hungry Happenings