Decorating a cake with your own hands at home (photo)

What is the most interesting during the preparation of the holiday cake? Of course, decoration. Decorating a cake with your own hands at home is a very interesting and fascinating activity. However, I must say that in addition to the original or complex design, a sweet dessert should also be tasty. Decorating a cake with your own hands at home is not at all as frivolous as some beginners might think.

Basic rules of registration

If you've got a bake of air biscuits, sandy or layered crusts and you like this business, sooner or later you will definitely have a desire not just to sprinkle the sides and top with crumbs from the cakes, although it looks very nice and at home, but also to make Volumetric compositions of mastic, draw patterns and print inscriptions.

Cake decoration by yourself at home can be done with fresh or canned fruit, jelly, various creams, mastics, fudge, whipped cream, etc. There are several rules that are very desirable to observe. For example, it is believed that the decoration of the cake at least 70% must consist of those products from which the basis of the dessert is made. Decorating a cake with your own hands at home for children should not contain alcoholic constituents. And if the little hero of the celebration asked for a cake with decor in the form of a car, and you can not cut it out of a biscuit, mold it out of mastic or draw, then think of something simpler, but similar subjects.

If the child does not like cream, do not fill the entire perimeter with voluminous roses, although they like you personally and are especially good for you.

These rules are rather arbitrary. It is obvious that decorating a cake with your own hands at home for a child is always a manifestation of love for your child, no matter how old it may be, as well as the desire to please a tasty and intricately decorated delicacy dear child. Therefore, we will not take away your time with detached descriptions of the rules of etiquette, but we will tell and show how to make various ornaments and mixtures for their sculpting.

The correct decoration of the cake with your own hands at home requires the observance of one obligatory condition - the cakes should not be visible. They should be carefully masked with cream or mastic.

Whipped cream

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home with cream is the easiest and quickest way to decorate. In addition, whipped cream perfectly combines with all types of dough, impregnation, filling and creams. Using different attachments, you can experiment with patterns. If there is no special confectionery bag, then it is possible to coat the cake with a thick layer of cream and apply the drawings with cutlery, as shown in the photograph.

Whipped cream for bulk decorations are made from fat cream, at least 33%, and powdered sugar. First, until soft peaks, whipped cream, then gradually introduced powder and whipped to hard peaks. The finished mixture is transferred to a confectioner's bag and squeezed out in accordance with the designed design.

Butter cream

Decoration of the cake with your own hands at home with a cream of butter is carried out in the same way as from whipped cream, that is, using the same tools and the same methods. But the options of cream cream is still more. In comparison with whipped cream it is more stable.

For its preparation you need a very good 100% butter - 522 g, powder of the finest grind - 280 g, high-quality condensed milk without vegetable fats and preservatives - 209 g, vanillin powder - 5 g, cognac - 2 g, cooked semolina Porridge - 65 g.

Mix the softened butter at the lowest speed. Five minutes after the start of the whisk, sprinkle powder with a thin trickle. Gradually increase. Put in the cream semolina porridge, condensed milk, cognac and vanillin. Beat at high speed for 10 minutes. This cream, when stored in a refrigerator, does not deteriorate for three days. It is very good to make flowers from it, draw directly on the cake, using different nozzles on the pastry bag, write congratulations.

For coloring the cream, use dry food colors, cocoa powder, cuttlefish ink, etc.

Decoration of melted chocolate

On a soft creamy coating very well look figures from melted chocolate. To make them, you need a confectioner's bag with a small hole, a chocolate bar and a foil. Chocolate is melted in a water bath and poured into a bag. Squeeze a thin stream onto the foil. Drawing on foil must be done in advance. It can be design elements for a house, cars, ornate curb, intricate curls, flowers, etc. Wait until the chocolate is solidified again. The hardened figures should be carefully separated from the foil and inserted into the cream.

Making confectionery products with sweet mastic

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home with mastic - it's quite simple, much easier than fussing with cream. However, the dessert, covered with mastic, gives the impression of a confectioner professional. Ways to prepare mastic are many. We'll talk about a few. If you are going to decorate the cake with a hint or figures made of mastic, then pay attention to the fact that:

- mastic can be prepared long before baking cakes; It is stored in the refrigerator for up to several months, provided it is tightly wrapped in several layers of polyethylene;

- powdered sugar should be the finest grind; Before work it must be sifted; If when rolling out in the mastic there will be a small solid fragment, it will rip all the mastic fabric;

- at connection of separate details, for example petals of colors, in places of connection the mastic should be slightly moistened with water;

- the mastic sheet is applied to a cake covered with frozen oil cream, ganache or marzipan; If you wrap a mastic wet biscuit, soaked in syrup or sour cream, it will dissolve;

- powdered sugar - the basis of mastic, its quantity in recipes - conditionally; Much depends on the humidity and temperature of the environment; Powder is mixed into the mastic until it stops sticking to the hands;

- roll out mastic is most convenient between two strong plastic bags; Some cooks advise it to do on a table sprinkled with powdered sugar or starch.

Milk mastic

It is the most inexpensive and the easiest to manufacture. However, because of the yellowish hue, it is not suitable for those cases when white or blue is needed.

For its production requires milk powder, powdered sugar and condensed milk. 250 grams of milk powder should be mixed with the same amount of powdered sugar, then pour 250 ml of condensed milk. Stir first in a bowl, and then on the table until it stops sticking.

Classic mastic with gelatin

10 g of gelatin should be filled with ten tablespoons of hot water and left for swelling. After 40 minutes, put the gelatin in a water bath and bring to complete dissolution. Cool at room temperature and in a slightly warm solution in small portions to powder the sugar (about 900 g). This mastic can be stained with all dyes. Keep it in the refrigerator, wrapping it tightly with two layers of food film. It is suitable for the manufacture of both the finest petals of flowers, and for three-dimensional figures - small houses, little people, fruits, etc.

Mastic from marshmallow

Mastic from marshmallow is the most popular of all. Probably, because it is made easier. You need to take a pack of white marshmallow marshmallow candies or others like these, put them in a microwave suitable for the microwave oven, add a tablespoon of lemon juice and put in a microwave for 20 seconds. The mixture will become liquid, and it can be mixed with a suitable food color. Mixing the powdered sugar, turn the candy mixture into plastic paste-mastic. Then you can roll the mastic into a layer according to the size of the cake and cover it with dessert, and you can make shapes out of it that correspond to the theme of the holiday.

Marzipan

Flour of almonds, 225 grams, you need to mix with 250 grams of powdered sugar, a teaspoon of lemon juice and one or two egg whites (see the size of the eggs and the consistency of the marzipan dough). The finished dough is rolled 2-3 mm thick into a layer slightly larger than the cake size. Cake the apricot jam and cover with marzipan. Carefully level and trim excess. Marzipan coating - good protection against dissolution for mastic and fondant. Figures from the same marzipan - funny decoration of the cake with your own hands at home. Photographs illustrating the use of marzipan crafts in the design of children's cakes, clearly demonstrate how the original look such desserts.

Ganache

With a very simple composition - bitter chocolate and fatty cream in equal quantities, ganache is prepared not quickly. Chocolate must be broken into pieces. Boil one third of the cream and pour into chocolate. Stir until smooth and remove for six to eight hours in the refrigerator. After this time, you should lightly stir the chocolate mixture, whip the remaining cream into a thick foam. Pour the chocolate mixture into the cream in small portions.

Ganache is applied by brush on the whole surface of the cake. This is the ideal base for mastic. Bitter chocolate and sugary-sweet mastic are perfectly combined.

Ganache can be used not only for mastic, but also for the glaze of fresh fruits, for example strawberries. In this case, sugar should be added to the cream.

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home with fruits is shown in several photos. Fresh fruits can be dipped in black or white ganache and placed on tiers, alternating with unglazed fruit.