phila*craft

Bruno's lantern


He designed the mushroom on the side himself.

Our school's lantern walk takes place on the big field of our campus. The talented students of the upper grades and a handful of generous and gifted teachers line a path winding over the field with luminarias (luminariae); as revelers walk along the path they stop to view short tableaus (tableaux) like two women carding and spinning wool or two shepherds playing recorder to a small flock. Last night's was amazing. Briar-rose was there.

The lantern you won't see was made out of candy. I used Jacques Torres' recipe with grated lemon and orange rind for flavoring. When the candy came to temperature, I poured it out onto greased parchment and waited until it was cool enough to handle but still pliable. I greased a bottle and then wrapped the candy around it and used kitchen scissors to even out the top. It was very pleasing in a "you can even eat the dishes" kind of way on Bruno's birthday cake last night. Sorry I'm not a good enough blogger (or mother for that matter) to have gotten a photo of the spectacle for your enjoyment (or Bruno's scrapbook).

To those of you who purchased raffle tickets and were curious about how that works online: Friday I helped make a spreadsheet of your names and email addresses that will be merged with the ticket document so paper tickets can go into the drawing box. Thank you very much and good luck. And if you didn't buy tickets because the $10 button wasn't working, I'm told it's up and running now. (The link's at the top of the sidebar.) The drawing is on Saturday, November 17th.