Dina Amin wrote in to share this video with us and the simplicity and pure accessibility were immediately striking. Here, she’s showing how to create a Moulid doll, a traditional sweet treat that seems to have fallen out of favor with retailers.
We wanted to bring this tradition back since the sugar dolls are not sold any more and are now being replaced by plastic dolls.
The method she’s using is pretty clever. She wanted to keep everything as accessible to locals in Egypt as possible, so she sculpted the doll itself out of a vegetable called a Taro. They chose that because they’re easy to get, and also quite large. You could use another veggie.
She then creates the mold out of gelatin, again an item that is much easier to source than silicone. It may not be the solution to creating a thousand props, but for a few tasty treats it seems to do the job quite well.
Important thing to note: the less water your veggie contains the better the gelatin mold will turn out. Gelatin absorbs water and hence would absorb the water in the veggie doll that you will carve and might distort it if you leave it for long and/or don’t oil your object.
She shared the whole process on Instructables in English if you have difficulty following along with the subtitles on the video.
