Home sweet pastries, without a doubt, much healthier and tastier than store offers! Nevertheless, even experienced housewives should not forget that not only delicious, but also beautiful cakes are much more pleasant to eat. If you are not quite experienced in the art of decoration, use simple recipes And interesting tips from the article.

Cake decorating cream

Before you decorate the cake at home, pay attention to the buttercream. It is considered a classic option for decoration - especially if you are preparing it for a wedding or as a birthday present for a girlfriend.

Recipe

It is butter cream that is best used by beginner confectioners - it is prepared very quickly and requires minimal time and effort. All you need is 8 tablespoons of condensed milk and a pack of butter in 200 grams.

• Remove food from the refrigerator in advance - you need them to be at room temperature, otherwise the cream will not work.

• Heat the already slightly melted butter in a water bath - in consistency it should resemble thick sour cream. Just don't overdo it and melt it!

• Beat the creamy mass with a mixer for 3-4 minutes until fluffy and white.

• Don't stop churning the butter. Gradually pour the condensed milk into the bowl. If, upon opening the jar, you notice that the milk has become sugary, you must first bring it to a boil and cool it again to room temperature.

• Continue whisking the mixture for 10-15 minutes to bring it to a smooth consistency.

Your cream at home is ready! If you need to give the mass color, give preference to natural food colors - they are easier to find in stores. In addition, you will be sure that nothing chemical has got into the confectionery.

You can learn more about the process from this video tutorial:

For example, yellow color is easy to obtain by adding saffron diluted in warm water, red - using beetroot or cherry juice, and it is better to take spinach juice as a green dye.

Unfortunately, due to the semi-liquid consistency of the cream, it is impossible to sculpt various figures. However, you can decorate the cake with cream in a way that no one has ever been able to.

There are many tricks in this business. For example, professional confectioners use a special syringe with nozzles of different sizes and shapes. At home, they are easy to replace by making a homemade syringe from an ordinary bag or A4 sheet - just fold the paper into a cone and cut off the bottom corner.

If you need to lay the cream in thin strips, cut off a very small part of the tip. For a wider strip, cut off a larger corner.

Depending on the selected thickness and shape of the jet, the possible patterns also change. It is convenient to draw with thin quick lines on the flat surface of the upper cake.

A line of cream of medium thickness is suitable for edging the edge of the product.

Thick corrugated short lines are used more often than others - with their help you can lay out interesting flowers similar to roses at home.

In addition, the cream can be evenly coated with the entire product completely.

Cake mastic: sweet recipe

Mastic is a plastic confectionery material that is used for modeling. The workflow is reminiscent of salt dough modeling, but the resulting figures can eventually be eaten.

Cooking

To decorate a cake with mastic at home, you will need ingredients such as chewing marshmallows in the amount of two hundred grams, powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons of water, dye.

• Pour marshmallows into a deep bowl and add water at the rate of 1 tablespoon per 100 grams. Instead of water, you can use lemon juice if you like not too sweet products.

• Cover with a plate and microwave for 30-40 seconds at 800 watts, or melt in a water bath.

• Add dye. Gradually enter powdered sugar, sifting it through a sieve - there should be enough of it so that the consistency of the mixture becomes like plasticine and does not stick to your hands. Stir with a spoon first, when it becomes difficult - knead with your hands.

• Wrap the finished mass tightly with polyethylene and refrigerate for about half an hour.

The mastic is ready! Get the right amount, sprinkle the workplace with powdered sugar, roll out the material on it and sculpt.

More detailed manufacturing process confectionery mastic described in this tutorial:

It must be remembered that the mastic quickly hardens upon contact with air, so be sure to wrap the excess with polyethylene and hide it in the refrigerator - in this position, the mass can be stored for up to three months.

Design Ideas

Due to its plasticity, mastic has recently become especially popular among confectioners - with its help, you can bring any fantasy to life! Some cakes have become like works of art: paintings, statues and sculptures, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow.

It will be easy for you to decorate the cake at home for both birthday and wedding, New Year or for Valentine's Day.

There are 2 main ways to use mastic:

• as a background - the material is rolled out with a thin sheet, which completely wraps the cake;

• as a material for sculpting various products.

Novice chefs are advised to give up sculpting large figures until they learn how to cook mastic perfectly - if the proportion of ingredients is not quite right, the products may crack when dried.

Cake decoration: other options

In addition to traditional ways to decorate a cake beautifully at home, there are many more. wonderful options. For example, you can not write off products such as chocolate, fruits and nuts. Even the smallest ingredients, like powdered sugar, can add zest to your meal.

Chocolate

Confectioners use chocolate not only as an independent dessert, but also as an excellent decorating material. The main uses of chocolate are divided into the following:

• crumb - grate the tile to get a powdery mass in which you can roll the sides of the cake or sprinkle on top;

• shavings - large shavings are cut from a slightly softened bar with a thin knife, which is then sprinkled on the product in random order;

• fondant - a dessert is melted in a water bath, in an oven or microwave, after which the whole cake is coated with chocolate.

However, you can create your own original version how to decorate a cake at home with a cocoa product.

Fruits and flowers

Fruit goes great with cream cakes- the product is airy and bright. Use one type of fruit to decorate sweets with a certain color or create a fruit mix - it all depends on your imagination. For example, you can decorate the surface with berries.

The decoration looks beautiful with thinly sliced ​​\u200b\u200bfruits laid on the top layer. To keep them better and look like glossy, fasten them with a special compound: dissolve the gelatin in water (the solution should be very concentrated) and brush the fruit layer with a wide soft brush.

In addition, decorating cakes with natural flowers has recently gained popularity. Some varieties of plants are even edible. The rest can be simply removed before use.

Do not forget about nuts and regular powdered sugar. Cut out a stencil of a certain shape from thick paper, put it on the cake, sprinkle with decoration and remove. Only the outline will remain on the cake - concisely, but very interesting.

Finally, watch a video with one of the options on how to decorate a cake at home with mastic.

Although they say that a woman loves with her ears, and the way to a man's heart is through the stomach, guests of both sexes appreciate dishes not only for their taste, but also for their appearance. Children are especially partial to the decor of food. This is used by manufacturers of confectionery products. But often, behind the lush cream roses and marshmallow towers, absolutely unleavened cakes are hidden, and even of dubious freshness. It's better to bake your own cake. This ensures that the product is free of preservatives and that the freshest ingredients have been used in its manufacture. But how to decorate a cake at home? We will talk about this in the article.

Simple and fast

Agree, cooking cakes is a long and laborious task. Therefore, there is no longer any strength or special desire for its decoration. If you still have cream from greasing cakes, just apply it on the top and sides of your culinary masterpiece. And then go to the store and buy ready-made edible decor. It can be like a normal coconut flakes a variety of colors, and wiser decorations: chocolate figurines, marzipan beads, sprinkling of bright mastic. All these gizmos look stylish, besides they are durable. Other sweets familiar to us will help to decorate the cake with your own hands. But if earlier we ate marshmallows or “solo” bizet, now we will not be afraid to use them as an element of decor. Original in cake (especially for children's holiday) look like M&M dragees. BUT biscuit cookies"Ladies' wands" is convenient to decorate the sides of the cake.

Decoration Warnings

It is not difficult to guess where the hostess turns for advice on how to decorate a homemade cake in an original way. Photos from culinary sites are full of real masterpieces. But it is worth remembering that you will not only look at the cake, but also eat it. Therefore, all decor should be exclusively edible, or at least not pose a threat to health. If the cake is baked for an anniversary, special candles should be placed on its surface that do not melt. There are only a few exceptions to the use of non-edible cake decorations. First: fresh flowers. On the eighth of March, you can decorate the top of the product with mimosa, rose, lily, calendula and lavender petals. These flowers are harmless to the body. Without fear, you can eat mint leaves and physalis. The second exception is the Barbie cake, for a girl old enough to know not to put a doll in her mouth. The cake is made like a fluffy hem of a skirt. And a doll is inserted in the middle. Care should be taken to ensure that her hair does not touch the cream.

Simple and economical

Each culinary specialist in the process of baking a cake has cake trimmings, and after layering them, cream. Do not throw away these products! Roll out the illiquid parts of the baked dough into crumbs with a mortar. Mix them with crushed nuts. Apply the rest of the cream on the sides and top of the product. Sprinkle with a mixture of cookies and nuts. How to beautifully decorate a cake with this simple decor? Let's use a stencil! Cut out various shapes from paper. Place on top of cake and sprinkle. And to decorate the sides, you can use ordinary oatmeal. Cocoa, powdered sugar, grated chocolate, confectionery confetti are suitable as a topping. It is important to correctly combine colors. Chocolate icing should be decorated with powdered sugar, and white buttercream with cocoa powder. Gummy bears will look good on a jelly top.

Shape as decoration

And let's give scope to imagination and bake something original instead of boring round cakes. Indeed, instead of thinking about how to decorate a cake at home, you can already create it as such. Let's think over the concept: what form we will give to our culinary masterpiece? And it’s not at all necessary to build something resembling the Burj Dubai skyscraper from cakes. It could be a violin-shaped cake. Then we powder the sides of the cocoa product, and melted chocolate draw strings. Curly cakes for children's parties are especially relevant. We have already mentioned the Barbie pie. But for a boy, you can bake a cake in the form of a car or a boat. In this case, we will only retouch our sculptural image with a cream. And with what pleasure the little ones will eat some of the stern, some - the bow of the ship, taking with them the sailors from the mastic as souvenirs.

This is a classic in cooking, and, as you know, it is always in fashion. Butter cream is an unusually plastic product. From it you can create roses, leaves, flowers, ruffles and flounces. The oil keeps its shape quite well, does not settle and does not flow. Also good for decoration protein meringue cream. However, eggs are a perishable product. But custard is not structural, you can’t create flowers from it. The same can be said about whipped cream. The figures created from them, after a while, turn into blots. So use cream on condensed milk, sour cream and proteins only for a layer of cakes. But how to decorate a cake at home with buttercream? If you do not have a pastry syringe with special nozzles, do not rush to get upset. You can do something similar yourself. Take a sheet of thick paper and roll it into a bag. Fill it with cream. We will cut off the tip of the bag. You can carry out truncation simply - in a straight or oblique line, or with imagination. Roll another hollow bag several times along. We cut the narrow tip in the shape of a triangle with the sharp end down. Now unfold the envelope and fill it with cream. Squeeze slowly onto the surface of the cake. The edges of the cream come out as if corrugated. By moving your hand back and forth, you can create lush ruffles - the design of the sides. Instead of paper for a pastry bag, you can take a regular plastic bag.

Classic confectionery decorations for a cake (cream, fruit, meringue, chocolate, jelly) are familiar and have already been tested by many housewives who are fond of pastry baking. However, sometimes you need to prepare a special cake with a spectacular decoration - for an anniversary, wedding, New Year or other holiday. In this case, the advice of experienced confectioners who know how to make a decoration for a cake and who can turn an ordinary sour cream into a culinary masterpiece will come in handy.

Mastic - sweet confectionery clay

Mastic is an elastic confectionery material made of powdered sugar, reminiscent of plasticine - various figures, flowers, reliefs, three-dimensional inscriptions, plot compositions are molded from it, or they completely cover the cake with it. To prepare mastic, you can use special tools - rolling, scrapers, stencils, molds and curly knives. In the absence of confectionery equipment, they use an ordinary board, rolling pin, knife, cling film and cookie cutters. Mastic is tinted with natural or artificial food coloring, but do it at the initial stage of preparation - when mixing the ingredients. To reduce cloying (after all, it takes a lot of powdered sugar), lemon juice is sometimes added to the mass.

Types of mastic and the subtleties of its preparation

The viscosity of the material is given by starch, gelatin, condensed milk, chocolate, marzipan, honey, marshmallows and marshmallows. Accordingly, there are different types mastics - gelatin (pastilage), marshmallow, milk, sugar and honey. Pastillage sets quickly, but remains elastic, so it produces spectacular flowers. Honey mastic is very soft and pleasant for modeling, like milk mastic - it has a very beautiful snow-white color and a pleasant texture. Some confectioners add a little oil to the mastic to make it more plastic.

The preparation of mastic is not very difficult - all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, and sometimes heated in a water bath, if this is specified in the recipe. If necessary, a little more powdered sugar is added to it, which plays the role of flour when kneading the dough. The board and rolling pin are usually sprinkled with starch so that the mastic does not stick, and the finished confectionery "plasticine" is stored in cling film. AND important point- decorating cakes with mastic is usually started when the top layer of the cream hardens.

We prepare mastic with our own hands

Gelatin mastic is made from 2 tbsp. l. gelatin powder mixed with cold water, and after swelling, the container with gelatin is placed for several minutes on water bath until it is completely dissolved. 450 g of powdered sugar are added to the gelatin, the mastic is “kneaded”, rolled into a ball, and then wrapped in cling film.

Chocolate mastic is a very tasty and beautiful decoration for, for its preparation you will need 100 g of dark chocolate, melted in a water bath, and 90 g of marshmallows, which are added to the melted chocolate. First, it is recommended to hold the marshmallow in the microwave - just a few seconds to soften it. In this case, it is necessary to mix the mass thoroughly all the time so that it does not burn. When the marshmallow is half melted, 40 ml of cream with a fat content of 30%, 1 tbsp. l. butter, 1-2 tbsp. l. cognac, knead well and add 90-120 g of powdered sugar. First, the mastic is kneaded with a spoon, and when it becomes thicker, do it with your hands.

Milk mastic is easy to prepare - 200 g of condensed milk, 2 tsp are mixed in a bowl. lemon juice and 250 g of powdered sugar. All the ingredients are ground to a homogeneous texture, and then the mastic is rolled out on a board and beautiful figures are cut out of it.

To completely cover the cake, roll out a large round pancake, spread it on the cake, making sure that its top and sides are completely covered. The mastic is smoothed with your hands and the excess is removed, which can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two months. When the mastic hardens, confectioners recommend slightly warming it up in the microwave or in a water bath.

Almond marzipan from children's fairy tales

Marzipan, often mentioned in Andersen's tales, is another confectionery "plasticine" made from powdered almonds and sweet syrup (or powdered sugar), with sugar making up more than one-third of the mass. Marzipan is a very elastic material, from which complex shapes and fairy-tale castles can be molded without gluing additives. Real marzipan is made from almonds, with the addition of other nuts, the mass will be deprived of plasticity. There is another secret to the preparation of this product - 1 bitter nut is taken for 20-50 sweet almond kernels, which can be bought in specialized stores for confectioners. This light bitterness helps marzipan to fully reveal its taste and aroma and gives it a special piquancy. If you can't find bitter almonds, you can substitute a few drops of almond extract, bitter almond oil, or almond liqueur. However, adding these ingredients to decorate the cake is not at all necessary. The absence of bitter notes will not reduce the plasticity of marzipan, it will simply not have this characteristic taste.

Decorating cakes with marzipan

German confectioners know about 200 ways to make marzipan. All these methods can be divided into two - hot and cold. With hot cooking technology, they cook sugar syrup, which is mixed with almond crumbs, however, the plasticity of this mass decreases when it cools, therefore, to cover the cake with marzipan, you need to sculpt decorations as quickly as possible. cold way the simplest because almond flour combined with powdered sugar and knead well. If the almonds are of poor quality, homogeneous mass it won’t work, so confectioners in such cases recommend adding an egg to hold the ingredients together. Of course, the egg must be very fresh, and such products cannot be stored for a long time. Various flavors are added to marzipan - liquors, cocoa, orange peel, spices and rose water.

To begin with, you should cook it - best of all in a cold way, as it is much easier. To do this, 350 g of almonds are poured for a few minutes hot water to make it easier for the skin to come off. Peeled nuts are slightly dried in the oven, not allowing them to change color, and then ground into flour. Beat 2 eggs, add 175 g of powdered sugar to them and cook the mixture in a water bath until the consistency of the cream. Remove from heat, add almonds to eggs, add 1 tsp. lemon juice, then thoroughly beat the marzipan. Sprinkle the board with powdered sugar, spread the nut mass on it and knead the almond "dough" until it finally thickens. You can add dyes to marzipan, and then sculpt whatever you want - objects, flowers, animals and architectural structures.

fondant for cake decoration

Fudge is a boiled down sugar syrup that is whipped with a mixer and cools, turning into a thick, viscous glaze or into a brittle and hard fudge. It all depends on the composition of the syrup and how it is prepared. The syrup can be cooked without additives, in this case we are talking about sugar fudge. If you add milk or cream to it, you get milk or cream fudge. Fudge can be chocolate, fruit and berry, nut, protein, creme brulee - depending on what ingredients are added to it.

For fudge, mix 100 g of very heavy cream, 1 cup of sugar, 40 g of butter and bring the mixture to a boil over low heat, stirring constantly. The fudge is boiled until it becomes creamy, and to check the readiness, a drop of the milk mixture is thrown into the water. Ready fondant easily rolls into a plastic ball.

Protein fudge is very tasty, for which 2 chilled proteins are whipped with a pinch of salt until fluffy foam, and then 300 g of powdered sugar and 2 tbsp are gradually added to them. l. lemon juice.

Ready fondant is best stored in the refrigerator, covering the bowl with cling film to prevent drying, it is applied to the surface of the cake with a culinary brush or culinary bag.

You can decorate the cake with grillage, marshmallows, marmalade, or use a simple stencil and powdered sugar. Involve the kids in decorating pastries - they will surely enjoy sculpting masterpieces from mastic or marzipan. Joint decoration of cakes brings together, and joint tea parties with delicious desserts turn life into a series of endless pleasures!

Delicious and at the same time surprisingly beautiful homemade cake is the culmination of any holiday! Do you agree with this?

Besides, birthday cake it is also a long-awaited sweet gift for the birthday man. And so he must look his best!

The news portal "site" continues a series of articles on decorating homemade cakes, and this time has prepared a few more for you detailed photos cake decorating master class

The collection of photo master classes on decorating homemade cakes is so appetizing that few people will probably resist not to cook something similar for their homework this weekend.

Cake decorated with chocolates and sweets

Great way to decorate homemade cake. Such beauty is made in a matter of minutes, and the result will delight even the most sophisticated guest.

Buy as many chocolates of the length you need as possible (the length of the chocolate should match the height of the homemade cake), as well as small sweets in colorful glaze. The final touches in decorating a homemade cake will be an exquisite festive ribbon, which will fix the whole sweet composition and give the dessert a special solemnity.

Cake decorated with chocolate

You can make amazing, magical patterns on your homemade cake with your own hands, without resorting to experienced professional pastry chefs, and even more so to well-known artists.

On the parchment paper draw any patterns with a thin stream of melted chocolate. It can be flowers, lace, stripes, waves, inscriptions and zigzags. Place the chocolate painting on parchment paper in the refrigerator to harden. Now decorate your homemade cake with ready-made chocolate figurines.

If you can’t draw at all, you can use stencils. For example, the most ordinary fallen leaves. Rinse the leaves well, dry, and then coat each leaf with melted chocolate. Place in the refrigerator until they harden. Then carefully separate the chocolate leaves from the real ones and start decorating.

Cake in the form of: fungus, teapot and owl

Very beautiful and unusual cake you can get it if you use the recipes for the preparation of sugar mastic. With its help, you can create the most incredible masterpieces of confectionery art from a homemade cake.

Cake decorated with icing sugar

And finally, an easy way to decorate a homemade cake is to pour it with sugar or chocolate icing. The final touch in the decoration can be fresh berries and fruits.

What is a holiday without guests, gifts and cake? Boring! A holiday is a holiday for having fun, chatting, dancing and pampering yourself with all sorts of delicious treats! If you know how to bake cakes and make delicious creams- this is already half the success. How can you decorate a cake at home?

You can decorate the cake at home with the help of cream. For its preparation, you can use condensed milk or powdered sugar.

How to decorate a cake at home?

First of all, you need to deal with the question of what kind of cream is ideal for decorating confectionery. There are not many of them:

• oil;
• protein;
• creamy.

The basis of the butter cream is butter, with a fat content of at least 82%. You can also use condensed milk or powdered sugar to make the cream. As for the proportions, when preparing butter cream with condensed milk, it is necessary to take into account the consistency of the milk itself. Very often, experienced confectioners use boiled condensed milk, it is denser and ensures the stability of the cream. To give the decor the desired shade, it is more advisable to use liquid food coloring.

You can also add cocoa powder or chocolate melted in a water bath to the buttercream. This technology is ideal for decoration chocolate biscuits and cupcakes.

Protein cream - one of the capricious. Its preparation will require patience and endurance from you. For decorating cakes, custard protein cream is used, the preparation of which takes place in three stages:

• Pour ¼ cup of clean water into a saucepan and add 6 tablespoons of sugar. Put on fire and cook the syrup for 3-5 minutes after boiling (checking readiness is easy enough - dip a spoon into the syrup and raise it so that the finished syrup flows down - if the thread is thick and continuous, your syrup is ready);
• put 3 cold egg whites in a clean and dry bowl and beat it with a mixer until a thick white foam (to get stable peaks, you can add 3-4 drops of lemon juice or a pinch citric acid);
• Continuing to beat, pour the prepared sugar syrup into the whites in a thin stream and beat the resulting mass for another 1-2 minutes. At this stage, the necessary flavors and dyes can be added to the cream.

Applied ready cream on the cake also with a pastry syringe and nozzles. Please note that overcooked or undercooked sugar syrup will cause the flowers and cream patterns to lose their shape very quickly. And the overcooked syrup will add bitterness to the cream. For thickening protein cream you can use agar-agar (this is a natural product, safe for children and adults).

To make buttercream, you need fat confectionery cream(at least 32% fat) and powdered sugar. Cream is also a rather capricious ingredient. Before whipping, it is necessary to cool not only them, but also the container in which you will whip the cream, as well as the whisks of the mixer. The observance of time when whipping the cream also plays an important role, a common mistake of novice cooks is over-whipped cream. Cold cream is whipped with powdered sugar until stiff peaks are obtained. If you doubt that the cream will not lose its shape within 12-24 hours, you can add a special thickener to it, which is sold in almost any supermarket. Buttercream can also be given any shade, but classic version decorating cakes with cream - white cream color.

How to decorate a cake at home with mastic

Today it is very popular confectionery, decorated with mastic figures. It is also worth clarifying here that there are two options for preparing mastic:

• sugar;
• marshmallow.

The first option is more time consuming, but it guarantees the stability and strength of your figures and flowers. By the way, almost every one of us has come across such figures and flowers - they are sold as decor for Easter cakes. Sugar and marshmallow mastic are sold ready-made, but you can also make them yourself.

To make sugar paste you will need:

• 80 ml of water;
• 7 g of instant gelatin;
• 15-20 g of soft butter;
• 2 tablespoons of glucose (fructose);
• 1 kg of powdered sugar.

How to cook

Gelatin must be prepared in advance.

To do this, fill it with cold water and set aside for 30-40 minutes, then heat the mass until the gelatin is completely dissolved (but do not boil!).

Add butter and glucose to hot gelatin, mix until smooth and refrigerate.

If you want to give the mastic any shade, then the dye must be added to the hot gelatin.

Powdered sugar is added to the mass only after complete cooling. It is necessary to knead the mastic like dough for dumplings (sprinkle the table with powdered sugar and knead the mass until the mastic stops absorbing the powder).

To prepare marshmallow mastic, you will need chewing marshmallow (marshmallow), powdered sugar, a little butter. Marshmallows must be heated in a microwave or in a water bath until they increase by 1.5-2 times (a piece of butter must be added to a container with marshmallows before heating). Stir the enlarged sweets, add dyes and, adding powdered sugar, knead the mass similar in consistency to plasticine. This mastic is used to cover cakes and create various figures.

Cake decoration with shavings

Even novice pastry chefs can easily master this option for decorating a cake. To get chips, we need to take a bar of milk chocolate and hold for 10-15 minutes in a warm place.

Working in gloves with a knife, we cut the chips, which curl during the work. We place the chocolate "curls" in the refrigerator until completely solidified, and then spread them on the cake in random order. This decoration looks unusual and appetizing.

Stencils for decorating a cake at home

If an artist lives in your soul, then you can make a great cake decoration using a self-made stencil.

You need to take a sheet of paper with a diameter slightly larger than the cake itself, turn on your imagination and draw any ornament or inscription that you want to see on the confectionery.

Then, with small scissors, carefully cut out the pattern along the contour. The stencil is ready! Now, holding it above the surface of the cake, sprinkle with powder, sifted cocoa or colored sprinkles, making a decoration.

You can decorate the cake fresh or canned fruit, grated chocolate, coconut flakes.