A beautiful cake is not necessarily expensive, long and difficult. If you want to bake a delicious cake and come up with an original decoration for it, the cooking process will turn into a pleasant pastime.
It's so great to bake a homemade cake, and then enjoy this yummy with the whole family, washed down with warm, aromatic tea. Today the shops offer a wide selection of cakes. But a good housewife will still try to bake a homemade one for the holiday. After all, sometimes in terms of quality, taste and beauty, homemade baked goods are much superior to store delights. If baking the cake took longer than expected and there was no time left for decorating it, then all kinds of fresh berries and fruits, colored confectionery confetti or abundant chocolate chips will come to the rescue. Or you can apply several ingredients at once. For example - a finished cake, greased with cream, is cut with a knife into small, neat portioned pieces, each portion is decorated differently: the first portion - with fresh berries, the second - with a pomegranate scatter and a "pinch" of confetti, the third - abundantly sprinkled with small shavings of white and dark chocolate and so on.
If time allows and there is a desire to surprise guests, you can decorate the cake with your own mastic, as well as marzipan or homemade icing. Mastic and marzipan are similar in consistency and all kinds of figures, flowers and bows can be created from both. But there are small nuances. Usually mastic is prepared on gelatin or marshmallows. It is easier to mold flowers and decorations from gelatinous mastic than from mastic on marshmallows. The latter is softer and is more often used by housewives to cover cakes.
Marzipan is prepared on the basis of grated almonds. Most often it is used to sculpt various animals and fairy-tale heroes. Even candies are made from marzipan. But I must say marzipan is more "capricious" in application than mastic. As for icing, this protein-sugar mass is used to sculpt "lace" volumetric products to decorate confectionery masterpieces. It is quite difficult to work with icing and is mainly used by professional pastry chefs.
By adding 2-3 drops of lemon juice and a piece of butter to the gelatinous mastic, you can achieve that it becomes more pleasant and softer in taste. Marshmallows are soft, viscous baby marshmallows.
But the most popular, delicious and easy-to-prepare cake decoration was and remains a thick protein-based custard. All kinds of painted decorations are made from it, as well as beautiful cream bouquets. If you follow the recipe exactly, the cream will get exactly the consistency that will ideally hold the shape of the cake decoration. To prepare protein custard you will need: 7 tbsp. tablespoons of water, 240 g of sugar, 3 egg whites, a packet of vanilla, a pinch of citric acid. First you need to prepare the sugar syrup. For this, sugar is poured with water and cooked over moderate heat with continuous stirring until bubbles form. Citric acid is poured into the finished syrup.
The readiness of the syrup is determined with cold water. To do this, drop a little syrup into a glass of cold water. If the drop did not dissolve, but almost immediately froze in water, the syrup is ready. It should be light and transparent.
Next, in a separate bowl, you need to beat the egg whites into a thick foam, then, without stopping the whipping process, pour the hot syrup in a thin stream, almost drop by drop, into the protein mass and beat until a dense and airy mass that will hold on an inverted spoon. The cream is ready!
