Today, professional confectioners are increasingly using mastic when decorating cakes . Thanks to the sweet plastic mass, you can create whole thematic compositions, turning a traditional holiday dessert into a real work of art.
The process of decorating the cake with mastic can be divided into two stages:
- Tight cakes.
- Modeling figures and other sweet decor elements.
To successfully implement each of the stages, you will need certain tools for working with mastic. With their help, you can easily create sweet masterpieces of culinary excellence even at home.
Basic tools for working with mastic
Before proceeding to decorate the cake, you need to smooth the cream on top, then the mastic will lie evenly. To do this, you can use a long knife or purchase special blades.
After preparing the basics, the cake begins to be wrapped in a sweet “blanket”. Here you need to have a basic
set of tools for working with mastic. It includes:
- Silicone mat - designed for rolling mastic. Avoids sticking the sweet mass to the table.
- Iron - helps to smooth the mastic on the cake and remove all the bumps and creases.
- Texture rolling pin - used to create a relief pattern. It can be inscriptions, logos, abstract images, geometric shapes, flowers and a variety of patterns.
- Silicone mat is an analogue of texture rolling pin. Outwardly, it resembles a silicone mat with a relief pattern, to create which you need to put a small amount of mastic on the mat and walk on top with an ordinary rolling pin.
- Roller knife - designed to cut off the edges of the mastic and cut out of it various elements of cake decorating. If necessary, it may well be replaced by a pizza knife.
These are the basic tools for working with sugar mastic, with which you can qualitatively fit the cake. This will serve as a good basis for further creativity.
Felling and plungers
To create flowers, leaves, butterflies from mastic dough, cuttings (notches) and plungers will be needed. They are metal and plastic.
When working with cuttings, they are simply applied to the rolled mastic and pressed with the palm on top. After that, a pattern with perforated edges is formed on the test, which can be separated from the formation by hand or using a small roller knife.
A plunger is another tool for working with
mastic for cakes, which is an upgraded cutting with a button. By clicking on it, a flower or petal is easily pulled out of the felling, while streaks (prints) are printed on them.
When creating flower arrangements on cakes, you can use patchwork. Using a special cutting on the dough, an impression is made, then the "picture" is cut out and painted with liquid food colors. At this stage, you will need more special brushes.
Silicone molds
When creating volumetric figures, silicone molds called molds are used. Using them is easy.
A small amount of mastic must be tightly tamped inside the mold and left for several minutes so that the dough dries and takes on the desired shape. After some time, remove the figure from the
silicone mold. She can immediately decorate the cake or pre-paint with a brush. Molds come in all shapes and sizes. With their help, you can create figures of animals, babies and a variety of objects.
Modeling toolkit
When working with mastic, modeling stacks are necessarily used. They are double-sided sticks with tips of different shapes. Such tools for working with mastic are universal and are used when wrapping cakes and creating decorative elements.
Most often, stacks are sold in sets, which includes several sticks at once. Each stick of a different shape performs a specific function:
- "Ball" - allows you to give a natural shape to the petals and leaves; a small ball is used in the formation of eye sockets;
- "Asterisk" - to separate the middle from the flower petals;
- “Shell” - to create an original pattern on leaflets;
- “Cone” - with its help you can make a neat recess, and this tool also allows you to give the petals a wavy shape;
- “Groove” - used to simulate sewing stitches, create parallel lines and smiles on people's faces.
These are not all tools for working with mastic. But they are basic, and such a set will be enough to make a real thematic composition out of a cake.