How to make decorations from fondant for a cake. How to make a cake decoration - make unique decorations with your own hands from mastic

Rarely is a holiday complete without sweets. Some people like simple treats, such as chocolate, marmalade, and fruit. Serve others complex desserts: cakes, pastries, but not simple ones, but exquisitely decorated ones, such that it’s a pity to eat them. Of course, the easiest way is to buy dessert in a store or a specialized pastry shop, but many people prefer homemade cakes. They are tastier than store-bought ones, they do not contain unhealthy additives, and the fact that the delicacy is prepared with love and especially for someone also means a lot. Unfortunately, it often happens that an incredibly delicious homemade cake is inferior in design to a store-bought one. The solution is simple: you can make mastic for the cake, it’s not difficult at home.

A few words about mastic

Before we tell you how to make mastic for a cake with your own hands, let’s clarify: we are talking about a special confectionery mass that can be used to cover the surface of the dessert, hide blemishes, and perfectly decorate sweets. The consistency of mastic is similar to very plastic plasticine: you can sculpt figures from it manually or cut it out with a special mold, you can roll it into a layer and cut blanks onto the surface of a cake or pastries. Overall, this is a great way to get creative, have fun in the kitchen, and enhance the flavor of your dessert.

Preparing simple mastic

First, we’ll tell you how to make cake mastic yourself. Small figures are most often sculpted from simple mastic: flowers, leaves, cartoon characters or animals. The mass is painted after cooking, so by separating small lumps and painting them in the desired colors (you can use simple food coloring for this), you will be able to create any masterpiece.

Ingredients:

• dry cream – 1 glass;
• sugar, ground into powder – 1 cup + 150-170 g;
• condensed milk (according to GOST) – about 170 ml;
• natural food colorings – optional;
• lemon – 1 pc.

Preparation

Mix the mastic in a glass or enamel container. Pour in cream (you can buy it in the supermarket), add powder. To begin with, take equal proportions, then add powder as needed. Pour in 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and condensed milk. The consistency of the mastic and how much powder will be used for kneading depend on its thickness. Knead until the mass becomes plastic and stops sticking to the surface. Roll it into a ball, wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Now the question arises, how to do colored mastic for the cake. Add food coloring or syrups of bright colors (orange, raspberry, cherry, blueberry) to the lumps of our mass and knead well. Let us continue to create with confidence.

Marshmallow mastic

A much more plastic mass is prepared in a different way from viscous chewing marshmallows. We'll tell you how to make marshmallow mastic for a cake. It also does not contain harmful ingredients, and it turns out even easier than the first option.

Ingredients:

• chewing marshmallows () – 3 packs of 100 g;
• – approximately 0.5 kg;
• fresh lemon juice – 1 teaspoon;
• oil “Peasant” – 1 tbsp. spoon;
• food coloring - optional.

Preparation

Place marshmallows in a microwave-safe container (they should be the same color), add lemon juice and butter. We set it to warm up and keep our marshmallows until they greatly increase in volume (from 45 seconds to one and a half minutes). We take it out and start mixing the mastic: little by little add powder, sifting it through a strainer. In this case, dyes must be added immediately, otherwise the color of the mastic will be uneven. Knead the mixture on a work surface until it becomes completely plastic and smooth. Next, roll it out and roll it into a ball several times to achieve a uniform structure. Keep the finished mastic in the refrigerator, tightly wrapped in cling film until needed. As you can see, making mastic for a cake at home is quite easy; both a professional and a novice cook can do it.

Certain rules must be followed. There are a number of ways that tell you how to make cake decorations as efficiently and simply as possible.

• For mastic decorations, only the finest powdered sugar should be used. If the powder contains large sugar crystals, when rolling ready-made mastic will burst.
• You need to take much more powdered sugar than is indicated in the mastic recipe.
• To prevent the finished mastic from dissolving while applying it to the cake, it should never be applied to a wet surface.
• You can put mastic only on butter cream, which must first be thoroughly cooled in the refrigerator, as well as on marzipan and ganache.
• You can simply glue finished mastic decorations by wetting the joint with a small amount of water. The details of the mastic figurines are connected to each other using egg white. You can use either protein alone or a mixture of it with powdered sugar.
• Do not leave the mastic in the air for a long time. It will dry up.
• Large mastic figures are made in advance. If you don't let them dry thoroughly, they can become soggy right on the finished cake.
• Figures that have a large volume are attached to the cake almost before it is served. If you decorate the cake with them in advance and place it in the refrigerator until the appointed hour, then the figures, having absorbed moisture from the air, will simply crumble.
• Color is added to mastic figurines using food coloring. Dyes are diluted before use.
• The cooled mastic begins to roll out poorly. To make it more pliable, simply place the mastic in the microwave for just a few seconds.
• from one to two weeks. In the freezer, the shelf life increases to two months. Before putting the mastic in the freezer or refrigerator, it must be placed in a plastic bag.
• When rolling out mastic, starch is used. The rolling pin is also sprinkled with it. In some cases, the mastic is rolled out on a surface coated with vegetable oil.
• After the mastic is rolled out, you need to cover it with film on top and use it to transfer it to the cake. The film should be on top. To prevent cracks from forming on the mastic coating, it is necessary to smooth the mastic directly onto the film.
• The mastic lies as smoothly as possible on the marzipan coating.

Before you make a mastic cake decoration, purchase the following:

1. 220 grams of marshmallows (you can use “Bon Pari” Marshmallow or “Zefirushki”);
2. 2 tablespoons lemon juice;
3. 1 tablespoon water;
4. 500 grams of fine powdered sugar.

Place marshmallows on a plate and pour water and lemon juice over them. Place in the microwave for fifteen seconds. Gently pour powdered sugar into the swollen candies. Next, the mastic must be transferred to a table sprinkled with powdered sugar and kneaded thoroughly. When it becomes viscous and dense like dough, you can start decorating the cake. Divide the mastic into several parts. One of them must be used to cover the cake. The remaining parts of the mastic must be painted with dyes and mixed thoroughly until the color is uniform. When working with mastic, your hands must be lubricated with vegetable oil.

When buying cakes from a grocery store or ordering from a pastry shop, many people think that making such beauty is too difficult and takes a long time to learn. Of course, you won’t get a beautiful branch of orchids or a huge rose right away, but you have to start somewhere. It’s better to start with flat, simple figures. At some point you will realize that you can try more complex voluminous jewelry cakes

Flat mastic decorations

A flower without a name. We will need two colors of mastic, for example, white and a little yellow. Round stack, cinquefoil cookie cutter, pizza cutter.

Roll out the white fondant and use a mold to cut out a flower. We slightly add a cut from the petals to the center and use a round stack to make the edges of the petals thinner. We take the flower and slightly crush its center from below, as if forming a cup. This is how we make several flowers for a bouquet, and then roll the yellow mastic into balls and place it in the center of the flower, gluing it with water. Place flowers on the cake. You can make stems and leaves from green mastic.

Simple rose. Roll out the mastic of the color required for the bouquet and cut long, even strips. Then we twist the strips into a spiral, simultaneously bending the top edge outward. This is very quick way decorate any cake and is suitable for both birthday cake, and for any everyday use. No matter how many flowers you make, they will all be eaten at once, since for these roses the mastic must be rolled out very thin.

Fantasy has no limits

By making figures with your own hands, as well as with the hands of your children, you develop fine motor skills fingers, which is so necessary for children. At this time, you communicate with the younger generation and at work you can discuss any pressing problems.

Modeling from mastic is like modeling from plasticine, it calms your nerves, gives you the opportunity to realize your fantasies in jewelry and gain experience in working with this confectionery material.

By decorating one cake in the company of children, you kill several birds with one stone. And also at this moment you learn from children the basics of simple modeling, since their fantasies are not limited by anything, and they know how to bring them to life.