Elegant holiday cakes have always been the main decoration of the table. They were decorated with the help of cream, flowers from the cream and inscriptions from it. Today, sugar mastic is more popular for decorating cakes, which allows you to create a variety of figures and coatings for delicious confectionery.
Cakes with mastic
To decorate the cake, you need to take 200 g of marshmallow, 2 tablespoons of water, sifted powdered sugar and food coloring. The marshmallow is mixed with water and dye in a deep bowl and then placed in the microwave for 40 seconds. When it melts a little, powdered sugar is added to the mass in small portions and gradually - until the mastic begins to resemble plasticine. After that, the resulting mastic mass is wrapped in cling film or polyethylene and put in the freezer for half an hour.
To give the mastic a piquant sourness, the water can be replaced with freshly squeezed lemon juice.
After removing from the refrigerator, the mastic is rolled out on a table sprinkled with starch or powdered sugar into a sheet of 2-3 mm thick, which is then wrapped around the cake. Also, a variety of curly decorations for cakes are sculpted from it - for example, bows, flowers, faces, rings and much more. In this case, it is important to protect the mastic from drying out, otherwise it will crack or break. Ready-made mastic jewelry can be lubricated with honey and vodka solution - it will give them a beautiful glossy shine.
Working with mastic
When creating cakes with mastic, there are several important rules to remember. So that when the cake is covered with a mastic mass, folds do not appear on its sides, you need to roll it out with a large margin - so it stretches under its own weight and is evenly distributed over the surface of the cake. Before tightening the cake, it is advisable to level it with butter cream, condensed milk or marzipan mass - while it is important to wait for its surface to freeze, since dents may appear on it.
If not all the mastic is used for the cake, it is wrapped in cling film and placed in the refrigerator, where it can be stored for three months.
The ideal supply of mastic when wrapping a cake is considered to be 10-15 centimeters (at least), which must first be stretched on the table so that there are no folds on the mastic mass. Then, with a knife, carefully cut the mastic in a circle, leaving an additional margin of 1/2 centimeter, since it can rise during the cooking process. If patches or seams remain when covering the cake with mastic, they can be easily removed using a wide brush moistened with water - this brush is used to plaster the mastic to a perfect surface, literally smoothing it out. If an air bubble gets under the mastic coating, it can be easily removed by puncturing with a needle and smoothening this place with your hand.
