Cake without decoration is a regular cake. After the preparation of the cake and cream for the cake begins the most difficult stage - its decoration. Of course, you can use cream, fruit, candied fruit, nut crumb for this purpose, but to become a real confectionery professional, you need to know and be able to do much more.
The famous cakes - “White Acacia”, “Leningradsky”, “Esterhazy”, “Prague”, “Zaher” and other culinary masterpieces were remembered by all lovers of the popular dessert, including its glossy shine that decorates the surface of products. How to make home baking had the same elegant look? Let's figure out the main secrets of making fudge for cakes at home, and find out what secret ingredient makes it shiny and plastic.
Fondant cake at home - basic technological principles
As a decoration for cakes, fudge at home is good because it can be prepared for future use and stored in a refrigerator until it is used, in a sealed container, which significantly reduces the time spent directly in the manufacture of the cake. The second advantage of decorating fondant cakes is the availability and low cost of ingredients.
Sweet is boiled sugar syrup, with molasses or invert syrup, or citric acid, and the addition to these ingredients of fruit ingredients, milk or cream, cocoa and various flavors allows you to diversify the taste of cake decorations, to bring a zest to the recipe.
Fudge is different in appearance, texture and its properties from the syrup and sugar glaze due to the special method of preparation.
To begin, consider in detail the description of the technology for making basic sugar fudge for a cake at home, so that you can understand all the important details of cooking using the example of a basic recipe, and then based on this recipe you can easily make other types of fudge, complementing them with milk, cocoa, chocolate, nuts or fruits. By the way, even if you are not going to make a cake in the near future, then fudge is a great addition to a sandwich and tea. You can also try to make your favorite candies out of it.
1. Basic fudge for cake at home
For the preparation of fudge in the main recipe requires only three ingredients, not counting the essence, which is added to flavor:
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:
This is the amount and set of ingredients required for making 1 kg of fudge. The technology of making fondant can be divided into 4 main stages:
• Cooking sugar syrup
Sugar is dissolved in water and boiled, removing the foam. When foaming stops, it is necessary to cover the pot with a lid so that the syrup splashes deposited on the walls of the dishes do not form crystals. Under the lid condensate is formed, which, flowing down the inner walls of the pan with syrup, prevents the crystallization of sugar. Syrup boil until cooked. The temperature of the finished syrup is 108 ° C, the consistency is a stretching thick golden-brown mass. Cooking time of the syrup to sample “on a thick string” is 25-30 minutes, the sugar concentration in it reaches 80-85%.
• Adding molasses and boiling down before the test “on a weak ball”
The syrup or invert syrup or citric acid solution is heated to 45-50 ° C and injected into the syrup, mixed, the container is covered again with a lid 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. Inadequate content of molasses leads to quick sugaring; when exceeding the norm, 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 making fudge for the cake at home, you need to stock up on a lot of ice. On the production for this there are special cooling systems. Since the end of cooking, the fudge needs to be rapidly cooled to 40 ° C, dipped in a saucepan or basin with ice, and also continuously and intensively stirred for uniform cooling. With slow cooling, the crystallization process also begins, which must be avoided.
• Beating
Warm the mass start to beat intensely. There is practically no time lag between cooling and whipping the fondant: attention should be paid to this. A small mass can be whipped with a spatula, manually.
Initially, the fudge syrup becomes cloudy, but as it becomes saturated with air and the formation of tiny sugar crystals, it takes on the appearance of a ready-made fudge. It is immediately transferred to a closing 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 on the cake, it is again heated to 40 ° C in a water bath. At this time, you can add flavors and dyes to the lipstick. To enhance the shine, egg white is added to the pre-warmed fudge for the cake at home, beating the mixture to a smooth 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 sufficient for 200-240 g of finished fudge.
Other types of fudge to decorate the surface of confectionery products have similar cooking technology.
2. Chocolate fudge for cake at home
To make chocolate fudge you need:
Sweet, the main 200 g
Dark chocolate 250 g
Cognac 30 ml
Cooking Method:
The chocolate is crushed and heated in a water bath to 40 ° C. In the same way, I heat sugar fudge prepared according to the main recipe (see description above). Both masses are combined, a tablespoon of brandy or rum is added to them, and then they are whipped until a homogeneous mass and the appearance of gloss.
The mass is applied to the surface of the confection with a spatula or a wide spatula. Tools for applying fudge pre-moistened in alcohol to the surface turned out smooth and shiny. This recipe for chocolate fudge for a cake at home is ideal for putting on cakes: “Bird's milk”, “Slavutych”, “Prague”.
3. Fudge with cocoa for cake at home on milk
Ingredients:
Milk, whole 0.8 l
Sugar 600 g
Cocoa 35 g
Molasses 200 g
Vanillin, crystalline 8 g
Output 1.0 kg
Cooking:
The technological process is similar to the preparation of fudge according to the main recipe, but the sugar is pre-combined with cocoa powder, and the cooking time increases, since milk is taken more than in the main lipstick. Vanillin is added after cooling the fondant syrup. The amount of cocoa can be increased if you need a more saturated chocolate flavor of fudge.
4. Cream fudge with cocoa for cake at home on a dairy basis
Ingredients:
Oil 82.5% (extra) 180 g
Whole milk (or cream 15%) 550 ml
Sugar 630 g
Dry cream (30%) 200 g
Treacle 195 g
Vanillin
Liquor
Cooking:
Warm milk (25-30 ° C) is combined with dry cream, stirred until dissolved, heated to 90 ° C, sugar is added and boiled over low heat until a sample for a thick thread. I add molasses to condensed milk and continue to boil thick sour cream into consistency. Then quickly cooled, beating the mass on the “ice pad”. After ripening daily, milk fudge is combined with butter, heating it in a water bath to 40 ° C. Beat to a smooth consistency. When whipping fondant with butter, add vanillin and apricot or other liqueur to taste.
5. Fruit fudge for cake at home
A simple way to prepare fruit fudge involves the use of fruit essences and food coloring. A more difficult option - 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 production conditions, juices for fruit candy are pre-leached, but acid is added after boiling to avoid the appearance of large sugar crystals, although this method of making fruit candy for industrial production is not cost-effective. At home, you can deviate from 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, and food coloring to enhance the flavor.
Ingredients:
Sugar
Water
Invert syrup
Food Color and Essence
Cooking:
The cooking technology and the composition of the fruit fudge ingredients are similar to the preparation of the main fudge (recipe No. 1), but invert syrup with the addition of food coloring and fruit essence is used instead of the syrup.
6. Fudge for cake at home: recipe for molasses
Watermelon “honey”
Ingredients:
Watermelon juice, peeled - any amount
Cooking:
The purified watermelon juice is brought to a boil over high heat in an enamel pot. After the juice must be filtered to remove the foam. Then it boils over slowly, to reduce the volume by 6-7 times. A test is made on a soft drop. Hot watermelon “honey” is packaged in dry sterile jars.
Home Fudge Cake - Tricks and Tips
It is worth stopping the attention on molasses, since it is this product that plays a crucial role in the preparation of confectionery fudge.
Molasses is a product of hydrolysis (dissolving in water) and starch fermentation. Of course, you can buy it in finished form 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 preparations. Adding molasses to ice cream contributes to its deeper freezing, not to mention that the taste of gingerbread and rye bread finally forms this particular product.
Why do I need to add molasses to fudge? Molasses prevents the process of reverse crystallization of sugar, contributes to obtaining a higher quality fudge, a plastic and delicate texture. Fruit molasses can be boiled from grapes, apples, pears, melons without adding sugar. Molasses can be made from barley malt, honey. All these types of molasses are successfully used in the preparation of confectionery. Less troublesome and available options for replacing molasses - invert syrup or citric acid, for lack of ready-made maltose dextrin. Invert syrup - in short - the usual sugar syrup, boiled before the test “on a thick string” with the addition of citric acid.
On the day when the preparation of the cake is planned, it is not necessary to disperse the energy and time for the preparation of molasses, invert syrup and fudge. Moreover, after cooking, the fudge should ripen: it is kept for 24 hours in a closed container, covered with a layer of water.
