By using small pieces of dough, or by using the braiding, twisting and turning technique of a closed pie, any pastry can be turned into a real work of art.
When preparing closed pies, excess or trimming of the dough can serve for the manufacture of decorations: ornaments, figures, relief patterns look very impressive even on the simplest and most uncomplicated dough products.
If you have small molds for figured cutting at hand, then with their help you can make leaves, flowers, geometric shapes from small pieces of dough. These blanks are used to form compositions for decorating the surface or edges of the cake. If desired, the decorative figurines can be colored with food coloring. To make the figures more securely fixed on the surface of the cake during baking, it must be greased with egg yolk or slightly moistened with water.
From the excess dough, rolled into a thin layer, cut into long strips and braid them into a classic pigtail of three plaits. With the help of culinary roller cutters, you can cut strips with curly edges - then the pigtail will look very impressive and original. The edge of the pie is smeared with a slightly beaten egg, a pigtail is applied around its circumference and its ends are fixed. Such braided braids can be laid in the form of an ornament and over the entire surface of the cake. A pigtail of two plaits looks no less beautiful - rounded strips intertwined with each other twist like a rope and fit along the edges of the cake.
Not only overhead decorations, but also embossed edges can decorate a closed pie. The easiest way to give an unusual shape to the edges is to carefully cut them with scissors to a depth of about 2 cm so that you get the same squares and bend the cut pieces of dough in a checkerboard pattern: one square inside the cake, the other outside.
You can give the edges of the cake a wavy shape using a simple technique: from the outside of the product, a finger is placed under the upper edge of the dough and, grabbing the dough, squeeze it with the fingers of the other hand - a rounded wave crest is obtained. If you put your finger under the dough on the inside of the pie, and pinch it slightly on the outside, you get a zigzag edge with a sharp ridge.
Cutlery can also help decorate the surface of the pie: the edges of the crust are trimmed flush with the baking dish, and the edges are pressed firmly against the baking dish with a fork. Fork marks leave beautiful streaks on the dough. The pattern can be made either solid or alternated with empty spaces. To prevent the fork from sticking and spoiling the dough, it is recommended to dip it in flour from time to time. With the help of spoons of different sizes, you can leave beautiful semicircular lines, arches or wavy patterns around the edges and surfaces of the cake.
If the closed cake is round, then cuts can be made on the top layer of the dough, going from the center and not reaching the edges of the product. These cuts divide the surface of the cake into separate triangular segments. Each segment is separated from the middle of the cake, in which a small hole is made for this purpose, the strips of dough are twisted around their own axis and put back in the same order. After baking, an intricate patterned surface forms on the cake.
Also, the strips can be twisted, starting not from the middle, but from the edges of the cake: in this case, the cuts must be made, grabbing the edges of the cake, without making a hole in its middle. Each two strips twisted in a spiral are connected to each other, so that the cake takes the shape of a flower with a relief surface.
