Ah, these cakes are on display! Decorated with intricate patterns, flowers and figures, they look so attractive that they cause an irresistible desire to taste this beauty.
An ordinary homemade biscuit will turn into a work of art if you approach its manufacture creatively and try to decorate a cake or a cake not only with cream, but also with edible decorations made by your own hands. Properly prepared caramel provides room for creativity and realization of the confectioner's hidden talents.
Secrets of caramel for jewelry
A standard caramel of water, sugar and citric acid, used to make well-known lollipops, is not suitable for making graceful decorations; in extreme cases, it can be used to make a decorative net formed from thin jets of extruded onto a sheet of foil and chilled caramel mass. Or a molded base stand for other decorations. You cannot make a flower from caramel from such a mixture; it is suitable only for casting.
To make the caramel mass suitable for sculpting, it is made more plastic by adding molasses during the manufacture. It is quite difficult to get molasses in the retail network, because if you want to make caramel flowers at home, try replacing it with maple syrup or fresh, not sugared honey (it should pour from a spoon). In extreme cases, use artificial honey as a plasticizer .
Caramel Cooking
- Pour water at a rate of 100 g of water per 300 g of granulated sugar into a pot or bowl intended for cooking, bring to a boil.
- Pour the granulated sugar into boiling water and cook, stirring until sugar is completely dissolved, add acetic essence or citric acid so that the sugar does not begin to crystallize.
- Put the molasses or its substitute in a boiling syrup in a ratio of 2: 1 (sugar: molasses), heat again to a boil and boil until a caramel sample is obtained (a drop of syrup placed in cold water forms a hard icicle, does not stick to your teeth when bite and crumbles) into small crystals). The mass has a yellowish tint, so separate the mixture and add food colors in order to make the caramel flowers as close to the natural look as possible.
The caramel mass is ready, it is time for the manufacture of the jewelry itself.
The formation of a decorative flower from caramel
Pour the contents of the pan onto the prepared surface. It is best if it is made of marble, but in its absence, you can use a silicone lining for a plate or a silicone mat. Then proceed as follows:
- Products are formed from a hot mass, with a temperature not lower than 70 ° C, therefore it is necessary to sculpt in thick heat-resistant gloves. Collect the slightly cooled mass into a lump and knead it hot in the palms of your hands, sequentially pulling the harnesses and again folding the workpiece into a lump. Ready caramel "dough" should resemble plasticine in consistency.
- Place the finished mass under a powerful lamp so that it cools down more slowly and quickly make jewelry details, in our case, caramel flowers. Cut small pieces of dough and use special molds to turn them into blanks of petals and leaves. The workpiece that has come out of shape is plastic, so give it the necessary bend with your hands, while cooling the practically finished part with the help of a fan.
Assemble or secure the finished elements on a caramel-molded stand. To do this, use a gas burner to heat the joints and align them. When cooling, the parts are firmly glued and the caramel flower will take on a finished look.