home » All about roses » Icing, or Edible lace. DIY icing for lace. Flexible icing at home recipe Elastic icing for lace recipe

Icing, or Edible lace. DIY icing for lace. Flexible icing at home recipe Elastic icing for lace recipe

Traditionally, homemade cakes are decorated with cream, nuts, and grated chocolate. But truly inspired chefs go further and strive to perfect not only the taste, but also the appearance of their baked goods. One of the most delightful ways is to create your own lace on the cake. Any baked goods with this design turns into a masterpiece!

At first glance, making lace on a cake at home is a difficult task. But those who have already mastered this art assure that everything is much simpler than it seems. “Cozy Kitchen” offers several recipes for craftswomen who want to learn how to make royal icing for cakes. It will give your baked goods a regal look!

Icing turns baking into a true masterpiece.
Icing can be applied using a stencil or by hand.

Is the icing for cookies the same as for cake lace?

Traditional icing, which is made from egg whites and powdered sugar, takes a long time to dry and is not flexible. In order to prepare durable and flexible lace for the cake, a slightly different recipe is used.

The easiest way is to purchase a ready-made mixture of Merletti or SugarVeil. But their price is significant, and training on such raw materials is a sure way to discourage a novice master. However, experienced home confectioners who know how to read the ingredients on the label and in the certificate were able to create their own recipe and told how to make lace on a cake at home. And even if the names of the ingredients don’t mean anything to you, you can buy them, mix them, and get great results!

Ready-made mixtures are the simplest option for making lace on a cake.

Unlike classic icing, cake lace has plasticity - it can be bent and draped.

Lace on a cake can turn into three-dimensional shapes.

Homemade lace cake recipes

Option 1, with regular egg white:

First of all, you need to prepare a “strategic mixture”:

35 gr. - xanthan gum (you can buy it in stores that sell soap-making products);
30 gr. — starch (ideally corn);
104 gr. - this ingredient has a very wide range in the food industry; it can be purchased online or in specialized sports nutrition and molecular gastronomy stores).

Having measured out the required amount of components, you need to mix them well. The resulting powder will be enough for about 100-110 uses. As practice has shown, it is stored perfectly, not requiring special conditions other than the absence of moisture.

Once you remove the cake lace from the silicone mat, you can use it as a whole or cut out individual pieces.

Now, when you need to make lace on the cake with your own hands, you need to mix:

1.5 gr. "strategic mixture" of maltodextrin, xanthan gum and starch,
33 gr. egg white (When separating, be careful not to let the yolk leak! Even the slightest drop will ruin everything!),
2 gr. glucose (a coffee spoon without a slide),
42 gr. sugar (sand will also work, but it is best to use sifted powder).

After mixing everything thoroughly, leave the mixture to “distance” for 10-15 minutes. Then heat in a water bath until the dry ingredients are completely dissolved. To bring the mixture to homogeneity, beat for 2-3 minutes.

Now feel free to spread the prepared icing mat with the resulting protein mass (don’t forget to coat it with olive oil first).

By adding dry food coloring to the mixture, you can get colored lace on the cake.

You can dry homemade cake lace outdoors. But it’s faster and more reliable in the oven. To do this, preheat the oven to 130-150 o C and place the filled mat in it for 10-15 minutes. Remove cake lace from the mat only after complete cooling!

Option 2, with dry protein:

If you are thinking about how to make lace on a cake exactly like industrial manufacturers, use albumin - dried egg white. Once you have purchased it, connect:

4.2 gr. “strategic mixture” (maltodextrin + starch + xanthan gum),
125 gr. sifted powdered sugar,
14 gr. albumin.

Of the resulting 143.2 g. of this mixture, in order to make lace on a cake once, you will need only 30 grams. Rest should not be stored for a long time so that the workpiece does not cake and lose its properties. So:

30 gr. We dilute the icing mixture in 18 grams of very hot (but not boiling) water. Mix thoroughly, beat, spread on a mat and dry.

The art of creating cake lace at home is accessible to everyone.

Lace for a cake made with your own hands in this way is no different in quality from that made from a store-bought mixture, but is much more affordable. But this is important both for those who are just learning how to decorate their baked goods, and for those who have already achieved true mastery in this art.

By creating lace on a cake with your own hands, you will delight others not only with the taste, but also with the design of your baked goods.

A cake decorated with lace and voluminous icing figures will become the “star” of the festive table.

There are many more ways to make lace on a cake. The recipes that “Cozy Kitchen” offered you today are the simplest. Stock up on the necessary ingredients, try, create and surprise others with your confectionery masterpieces!

Today it is very difficult to find a person who does not like sweet desserts, such as cakes. There are a large number of such recipes in cooking; they can be decorated with various patterns, inscriptions or icing. Probably not everyone knows what it is. Let's try to figure this out. So, translated from English, this term means “ice pattern.” And this is not surprising, since products made from it are similar to ice (in color and consistency). Icing, the recipe for which we will definitely learn today, makes it possible to create extraordinary decorations not only for desserts, but also for various dishes. Properly made, it has a matte finish and enormous strength. So, let's try to understand this issue in more detail.

What is "icing"?

Icing is a plastic thick mass of sugar and proteins used to create confectionery decorations that have volume. Usually this mass is white, but with the help of food coloring it can be given any shade. Icing, the recipe for which will be given below, is made by rubbing powdered sugar with fresh egg white. Lemon juice or acid, glucose syrup, glycerin, etc. are added to this mixture.

Working with icing

To work with flexible mass, pre-prepared templates are required, for example, drawings on paper or ready-made contours. Place cling film on such a drawing or place it in a file. In this case, it is not recommended to use parchment or tracing paper, since the icing sticks very strongly to them and then does not come off. So, the film is lubricated with a layer of olive oil (this is important!). Fresh protein mass is placed in a pastry envelope or syringe. At the same time, it should not be liquid so that it does not spread along the contours of the picture. A thick mixture, on the contrary, will be difficult to squeeze out of the envelope. However, in this case, you can sculpt from it in the same way as plasticine.

All elements of the drawing should not be thick. If you want to get multi-colored icing, the recipe for which is very simple, add food coloring to the mixture. You can also apply the mixture to the finished cooled confectionery product, for example, cookies or gingerbread, chocolate glaze. Do not apply it to biscuits or other non-dry surfaces. Only finished icing decorations are placed on them before serving. So, the film with a pattern is dried for about three days. Then the jewelry is carefully removed.

Openwork icing decorations

In this case, a mass of protein and sugar, that is, icing, the recipe for which is attached, is placed on small balloons; they must first be inflated and lubricated with oil. After the pattern has dried, the ball is simply deflated and removed from the product. This must be done carefully, as the resulting products are very fragile. It is recommended to make them with a small margin. A broken part can be glued using egg white mixed with powdered sugar. Store such jewelry at room temperature in a box. Let's take a closer look at the homemade icing recipe.

Icing heart

Ingredients: twenty grams of egg white, one hundred and fifty grams of powdered sugar, fifteen drops of lemon juice, red food coloring, vegetable oil, file and heart template.

Preparing icing

The whites are gently mixed, but not beaten. Add powder gradually, without ceasing to stir, add lemon juice with red food coloring dissolved in it. Mix everything thoroughly until the color becomes uniform. The mass is transferred to a pastry envelope or bag with a nozzle and left for a while, covering the hole with a wet napkin so that it does not dry out.

Preparing the template

After we have looked at the recipe for icing for decorating cakes, we need to make a template. To do this, cut out a heart of the required size from cardboard. Using plasticine, they give it shape and volume. To do this, plasticine is placed on top of cardboard. Next, the template is placed in a file and pressed tightly so that all the air comes out. Under the cardboard, the file is assembled into a knot so that it lies flat and tight on the plasticine. The file is lubricated with vegetable oil.

Pattern Formation

Then a thick line is drawn along the contour, and then any pattern is made at your discretion. These can be intertwined lines, squares, ovals, etc. The finished icing is left to dry for one night. Then they begin to carefully remove it so as not to break or crush it. Having made two such hearts, they are glued together, the same icing is used for this, and the decorations are set back to dry.

Icing lace in fifteen minutes

Ingredients: one protein, two hundred grams of powdered sugar, half a spoon of citric acid. Equipment: olive oil, scraper, silicone mat with patterns, sponge.

Preparation

The icing recipe for lace is no different from the one we discussed above. To do this, the egg white is mixed (but not beaten) with sugar and citric acid. Stir until a thick mass is obtained.

Making lace

The egg mass is distributed over the entire surface of the mat, removing excess. Then everything is placed in a preheated oven and baked for three or five minutes, depending on the type of oven. After time, the finished lace is carefully removed and patterns are made from it as desired. You can decorate the cake with it by attaching it to the sides. You can make all sorts of figures - it all depends on the imagination of the cook.

As you can see, this cake icing recipe is very fast. The lace is ready in fifteen minutes, so you can save time for preparing other holiday dishes.

Beautiful figures from icing

Ingredients: one egg, two hundred grams of powdered sugar, one teaspoon of citric acid.

Making icing (recipe): master class

Beat the egg whites with a fork until a light foam appears. Then add powdered sugar in portions, rubbing the mixture until smooth, and then add citric acid, continuing to stir. You should get a homogeneous, stable protein mass with a thick consistency. Add food coloring if desired. The icing is ready! As it turned out, everything is quite simple. It must be transferred to a pastry bag.

Jewelry making

Balls of the required size are inflated and lubricated with vegetable oil using a brush; olive oil is best in this case. They begin to apply the ornament on top. Once the patterns are applied, the ball is hung to dry. It should hang like this for about a day.

After time has passed, the ball is pierced with a needle and removed from the sugar figure. These sweet balls, which are prepared, can be used to decorate cakes or Christmas compositions.

Lastly...

Thus, it is not difficult to make flexible icing, the recipe for which we already know. Using sugar mass you can create not only lace and balls, but also candlesticks, butterflies, snowflakes and more. This requires only stencils, which can easily be found in children's coloring books. Working with stencils is quite simple, you just need to apply ready-made icing on them and then dry it. Large parts can be glued together using the same icing.

Royal icing is the most popular decoration for various confectionery products. With its help, real masterpieces are created. Patterns that seem to be woven from thin lace look delicious on cakes, gingerbread cookies, pastries and cookies. Decorating confectionery products with icing is an interesting activity. This requires only a pastry bag, blanks with drawings, a plastic bag, olive oil, egg mass, as well as the desire and imagination of the cook. Undoubtedly, every cook will be able to create his own masterpiece that everyone will like.

As I already said, we will use a ready-made mixture for flexible icing - Frivolite. Everything is very simple with her, really.

Take our dry powder. Not much. I’ll try to orient you: for 4 strips of lace about 35 cm long and about 6 cm high, I needed about 30 g of dry mixture.

Pour our powder into a small bowl.

Add hot water (boiled!) - exactly as much as the powder, by weight. That is, 30 g of dry mixture for flexible icing requires 30 g of hot water. This can be varied, by the way: you need thicker lace - add less water, thinner - more. However, I was quite happy with the 1:1 option.

Mix well and let stand for 15-20 minutes.

The mixture will thicken and you are ready to work!

Now we need to apply it to a special icing mat. There are now a lot of different rugs on sale, for every taste, color and budget, for different purposes. However, I came to the conclusion that not all mats are equally good and easy to use. There are rugs that are downright bad. They can be soft, but they are too thick, with very deep slits, and it is more difficult to remove the lace from them. Please note that I am not saying that it is completely impossible! You can, of course, but you need to be especially careful.

There are also rugs with an insufficiently thought-out design: when parts of the ornament simply do not connect in some places! When you remove the lace from such a rug, the ornament will crumble before your eyes, because the details of the pattern “do not stick” to each other, and the problem here is not in your hands, the mixture or the oven, but precisely in the quality of the rug. Pay attention to this when choosing an icing mat.

I have one such not very successful rug. Deep slits, small details - this is nothing, after getting used to it, the third time I managed to get the lace out of it, but the large parts are simply not fastened to each other, this is not provided for by the design and this, I must admit, is very inconvenient. Although the drawing itself is beautiful!

Personally, I have concluded that thin, flexible mats are ideal for working with edible lace. The pattern may also be small, but if the slots are shallow, the lace will come out without problems. Checked!

We will take such a rug.

We apply our ready-made mixture to it, trying to fill all the recesses.

I first did it with a silicone spatula. And later I tried to immediately apply and distribute using a pastry spatula, and it was much more convenient!

Now an extremely important moment! You want the flexible icing mixture to fill ONLY the cells that form the pattern! There should be no mixture remaining on the remaining parts of the mat! To do this, use a spatula for leveling cakes to move it across the mat with some force, as if removing all the residue.

If you do not give this process due importance, when it dries, your lace will not be lace enough, so to speak, and generally sloppy.

Something like this.

So, here we are, applying the mixture to the entire mat.

Now we put it in an oven preheated to 90 degrees for about a few minutes. Attention! You will have to figure out the exact time yourself, it all depends on the oven. This may take 5 or 10 minutes.

The main thing is that the lace should dry and easily separate from the rug. You will understand this. If you try to grab the tip and feel that it is still a bit runny, it means it’s not ready yet. The lace should be dry)

Immediately after we remove the baking sheet with the mat from the oven, there is no need to separate the lace: let the silicone cool.

You see, the appearance of dried lace is almost no different from that which has not yet been baked.

Let it cool a little and very carefully separate the lace from the rug. We lift the lace and hold the rug. Many people recommend helping yourself with a spatula.

I tried just holding it with my hands, and with a spatula, and I will say that everything comes off perfectly just like that. Be careful only in places with particularly thin lines and sharp corners of the pattern. It’s better to separate them first, and only then the middle. Just try it - you'll feel right.

Separated. Do you see how wonderful it is? Beautiful and very flexible.

If you have any left over diluted mixture, it will calmly wait until you bake and remove the first batch of lace, apply the rest and go back to the oven!

So our quick one is ready lace for cake!

According to the manufacturer, this lace can be dried simply at room temperature for several hours. However, I haven't checked. I suspect that if you have high humidity in the room, the lace will take a very long time to dry. It’s still more convenient and much faster in the oven. What if you only have one small rug? Then for sure - only the oven!

From the recommendations of experienced girls: it is better to dry it slightly than not dry it enough. Dried lace is easier to separate from the cake than wet lace. And you don’t have to worry about its flexibility: if it’s just in the room, it will pick up moisture from the air and become completely plastic.

You can store finished lace for a long time, up to a month for sure. You just need to pack it in a zip folder. I will note that, in my experience, even in a zip bag, this lace dries out slightly over time. If you just want to glue it around the circumference of the cake, it will most likely be flexible enough, even when dried. But if you want to put it together, then... it’s not scary either! Just hold a strip of lace over the steam from the teapot for just a few seconds - and now you have super flexible, pleasant, obedient, elegant sweet lace in your hands again!

What else did I forget to tell you?

A! About coloring! Lace is dyed with ordinary water-soluble dyes; it is better to use dry or gel dyes so as not to liquefy the mixture. Remember that the color will intensify when baked. That is, if you want to get, for example, a black color, then the color of the mixture itself will never be black, no matter how hard you try: it will have a gray-blue tint or with a purple tint (and sometimes the black dye gives off an emerald appearance). But when baked, the color will appear. If you don’t want to mix in too much dye, make a base color, dry the lace and paint it on top with a dry brush, for example, kandurin of the desired shade.

Remember that the lace mixture can be used not only for its intended purpose, in tandem with a rug. Using a pastry bag with a tube attachment, you can manually “weave” any patterns from flexible icing, for example, a fishing net. You can simply pipe and bake even strips to imitate, say, television wires. I recently had a cake with house roofs, maybe you even saw it in my instagram, such an effect was really missing there, but a good idea often comes late, unfortunately.

But, of course, the most beautiful flexible icing is, in fact, lace! Delicate, delicate, like real lace, found in the depths of an ancient chest, on which skilled craftswomen worked by hand for many, many days.

Here's how it might look on a cake.