A cake without decoration is an ordinary cake. After making cakes and cream for the cake, the most difficult stage begins - its decoration. Of course, you can use cream, fruits, candied fruits, nut crumbs for this purpose, but to become a real professional in the confectionery business, you need to know and be able to do much more.
Famous cakes - "White Acacia", "Leningradsky", "Esterhazy", "Prague", "Sacher" and other culinary masterpieces were remembered by all lovers of the popular dessert, including their glossy sheen that adorns the surface of the products. How to make homemade cakes look the same elegant look? We will figure out the main secrets of making fudge for cakes at home, and find out what secret ingredient makes it shiny and plastic.
Homemade cake fondant - basic technological principles
As a decoration for cakes, fudge at home is good because it can be prepared for future use and stored in the refrigerator until use, in a sealed container, which significantly reduces the time spent directly on making the cake. The second advantage of fondant cake decorating is the availability and low cost of the ingredients.
Fondant is boiled sugar syrup, with the addition of molasses or invert syrup, or citric acid, and the addition of fruit ingredients, milk or cream, cocoa and various flavors to these ingredients allows you to diversify the taste of cake decorations and add a twist to the recipe.
Fondant differs in appearance, consistency and its properties from syrup and sugar glaze due to a special cooking method.
To begin with, we will consider in detail the description of the technology for making basic sugar fondant for cake at home, to understand all the important details of cooking using an example of a basic recipe, and then on the basis of this recipe it is easy to prepare other types of fudge, supplementing them with milk, cocoa, chocolate, nuts or fruit. By the way, even if you are not going to cook a cake in the near future, then fondant is a great addition to a sandwich and tea. You can also try to make your favorite sweets from it.
1. Basic fondant for cake at home
To prepare fudge according to the basic recipe, only three ingredients are required, not counting the essence that is added for flavoring:
Water 265 ml
Sugar 795 g
Molasses - 120 g; or invert syrup - 135 g; or citric acid - 12 g
Essence 1.8 ml
Cooking Technology:
It is this quantity and set of ingredients that will be required to prepare 1 kg of fudge. In the technology of cooking fudge, 4 main stages can be distinguished:
• Preparation of sugar syrup
Sugar is dissolved in water and boiled, removing the foam. When the foaming stops, the pan must be covered with a lid so that the spray of syrup deposited on the walls of the dishes do not form crystals. Condensation forms under the lid, which, draining along the inner walls of the syrup pan, prevents the crystallization of sugar. The syrup is boiled until tender. The temperature of the finished syrup is 108 ° C, the consistency is a stretching dense mass of golden brown. Cooking syrup before the test "on a thick string" - 25-30 minutes, the sugar concentration in it reaches 80-85%.
• Adding molasses and boiling until sample "on a weak ball"
The syrup or invert syrup or citric acid solution is heated to 45-50 ° C and introduced into the syrup, mixed, the container is covered again and the heating temperature is increased to 115 ° C, boiled for another half an hour.
Important: it is not recommended to increase or decrease the amount of molasses added, since non-compliance with the norm leads to a deterioration in the quality of fudge. Lack of molasses leads to rapid sugaring; when the norm is exceeded, the finished lipstick does not dry out on products for a long time.
• Cooling fudge
Actually, you need to prepare for this stage in advance and, since we are talking about preparing fudge for the cake at home, you need to stock up on a lot of ice. In production, there are special cooling systems for this.
From the moment the cooking is finished, the fondant needs to be quickly cooled to 40 ° C by lowering it into a pan or bowl with ice, and it should be continuously and intensively mixed to cool evenly. With slow cooling, the crystallization process also begins, which must be avoided.
• whipping
The warm mass is intensively whipped. There is practically no time gap between cooling and whipping the fondant: you need to pay attention to this. A small mass can be whipped with a spatula, manually.
At first, the fondant syrup becomes cloudy, but as it becomes saturated with air and the smallest crystals of sugar are formed, it takes on the form characteristic of a finished fondant. It is immediately transferred to a closed container, covered with water from above, tightly closed with a lid and left for 18-24 hours to mature. The container is placed in the refrigerator.
To apply the finished lipstick to the cake, it is again heated to 40 ° C in a water bath. At this time, flavoring and coloring agents can be added to the lipstick. To enhance the shine, egg white is added to the warmed fudge for the cake at home, whipping the mass until a homogeneous consistency. Protein is introduced at the rate of 2% by weight of sugar. The mass of one protein, on average - 30 g; this amount is enough for 200-240 g of finished fudge.
Other types of fudge for decorating the surface of confectionery products have a similar cooking technology.
2. Chocolate fondant for cake at home
To make chocolate fudge you will need:
Fudge, main 200 g
Dark chocolate 250 g
Cognac 30 ml
Cooking method:
Chocolate is crushed and heated in a water bath to 40 ° C. In the same way, I heat the sugar fondant prepared according to the main recipe (see description above). Both masses are combined, a tablespoon of brandy or rum is added to them, after which they are beaten until a homogeneous mass and brilliance appears.
The mass is applied to the surface of the confectionery with a spatula or a wide spatula. Tools for applying fudge are pre-moistened with alcohol to make the surface smooth and shiny.
This recipe for chocolate fudge for cake at home is ideal for applying to cakes: "Bird's milk", "Slavutich", "Prague".
3. Fondant with cocoa for a cake at home in milk
Ingredients:
Milk, whole 0.8 L
Sugar 600 g
Cocoa 35 g
Molasses 200 g
Vanillin, crystalline 8 g
Yield 1.0 kg
Cooking:
The technological process is similar to the preparation of fudge according to the basic recipe, but sugar is pre-combined with cocoa powder, and the cooking time is increased, since more milk is taken than in the main fondant. Vanillin is added after cooling the fondant syrup. The amount of cocoa can be increased if a richer chocolate flavor of fudge is required.
4. Creamy fondant with cocoa for home-made dairy-based cake
Ingredients:
Oil 82.5% (extra) 180 g
Whole milk (or cream 15%) 550 ml
Sugar 630 g
Dry cream (30%) 200 g
Molasses 195 g
Vanillin
Liquor
Cooking:
Warm milk (25-30 ° C) is combined with dry cream, mixed until dissolved, heated to 90 ° C, sugar is added and boiled over low heat until sample on a thick string. Add the molasses to the condensed milk and continue to boil until the consistency of thick sour cream. Then it is quickly cooled, whipping the mass on an “ice pillow”. After daily maturation, milk fudge is combined with oil, heating it in a water bath to 40 ° C. Beat until smooth. When whipping the fondant with butter, add vanillin and apricot or other liquor to taste.
5. Fruit fondant for cake at home
A simple way to make fruit fudge involves the use of fruit essence and food coloring. A more complicated option is fudge based on natural fruit syrup (fruit syrup). The fact is that the presence of acid in fruit juices is undesirable at the initial stage of cooking fudge. Therefore, under industrial conditions, juices for fruit fudge are pre-leached, but after boiling, acid is added to avoid the appearance of large crystals of sugar, although this method of preparing fruit fondant is also unprofitable for industrial production.
At home, you can deviate from the standard requirements and add concentrated fruit and berry syrup containing acid (invert syrup based on natural juices) to boiled sugar syrup, and use essences, fruit tinctures, food colors to enhance the aroma.
Ingredients:
Sugar
Water
Invert syrup
Food Color and Essence
Cooking:
The cooking technology and composition of the ingredients of fruit fudge are similar to the preparation of the main fudge (recipe No. 1), but instead of molasses, invert syrup is used with the addition of food colors and fruit essence.
6. Fondant for cake at home: a recipe for molasses
Watermelon "honey"
Ingredients:
Watermelon juice, peeled - any quantity
Cooking:
The peeled watermelon juice is brought to a boil over high heat in an enamel bowl. After the juice must be filtered to remove the foam. Then it is boiled over low heat, until the volume is reduced by 6-7 times. A sample is made on a soft drop. Hot watermelon "honey" is packed in dry sterile jars.
Homemade Cake Fondant - Tips and Tricks
It is worth paying attention to molasses, since this product plays a decisive role in the preparation of confectionery fudge.
Molasses is a product of hydrolysis (dissolution in water) and starch fermentation. Of course, you can buy it ready-made or cook it yourself in several ways. Cooking molasses at home is a rather troublesome and lengthy process, but it is an ideal additive for kvass, it can be used to make jam in the season of harvesting. Adding molasses to ice cream contributes to its deeper freezing, not to mention the fact that the taste of gingerbread and rye bread finally forms this particular product.
Why add molasses to fondant? Molasses prevents the process of reverse crystallization of sugar, contributes to obtaining higher quality fudge, plastic and delicate texture. Molasses can be boiled from grapes, apples, pears, melons without the addition of sugar. A stick can be prepared from barley malt, honey. All these types of molasses are successfully used in the preparation of confectionery.
Less troublesome and affordable options for replacing molasses - invert syrup or citric acid, for lack of ready-made dextrin maltose. Invert syrup - in short - regular sugar syrup, boiled before the test "on a thick thread" with the addition of citric acid.
On the day when the preparation of the cake is planned, you should not spray energy and time for the preparation of molasses, invert syrup and fudge. Moreover, after cooking, the fudge should ripen: it is kept for a day in a closed container, covered with a layer of water.
