Icing, or Edible lace. DIY lace icing

Preparation time: 30 minutes + 1-2 days for hardening

How to make royal icing, step-by-step recipe with photos:

Step 1. Carefully separate the white from the yolk so that not a single drop falls into the container. It will depend on this final result icing. Sift the powdered sugar into another container.

Plus store-bought fine powdered sugar in the finest grind, which will not tear the icing and crumble it. You won’t be able to prepare such fine powder on your own, so either set yourself up for an “amateur” result, or purchase fine powder in a specialized store, which is sifted through a nylon cloth to ensure the quality of its grinding.

Step 2. Beat the egg whites with a fork until foamy.

When preparing icing, we will not need a mixer, unlike, for example, we will use exclusively manual labor. The mixer saturates the icing with air bubbles, which will make the product very fragile.

Step 3. Add 1 tbsp into the beaten egg whites. powder, carefully rubbing the mass each time to avoid the formation of lumps.

Step 4. When half of the powdered sugar is gone, add citric acid to the icing mixture; it will give the products a white color and dilute the cloying taste of the decorations.

If instead citric acid you are using juice, it is better to pour it in at the end of kneading.

Step 5. The finished mass for icing should be dense, viscous and homogeneous.

Now is the time to divide it into parts and decorate it with food coloring (if you plan to make colored pictures) or get silicone moldings (molds for icing decorations).

Step 6. If you don't have silicone moldings, use regular children's coloring books or pictures printed from the Internet. Place them in a file and coat with a thin layer of olive oil to prevent the icing from sticking (it is better not to use vegetable oil, as it polymerizes (hardens) when exposed to air).

Step 7. Apply icing using brushes or regular syringes, then leave the patterns/figures to dry for 1-2 days. If everything was done correctly, after drying, the icing products are very strong and do not crumble.

Leftover icing can be stored in the refrigerator for a couple of days, but since the protein mass dries out very quickly, confectioners do not recommend doing this. It is advisable to prepare icing “here and now” as needed.

Everyone loves it. Cookies, cupcakes, gingerbread - all this improves your mood. And when they are also beautifully decorated, they look doubly appetizing. Professional confectioners create works of art that are sometimes painful to even eat. Housewives today are also not far behind them in their desire to make a real holiday for their loved ones.

Decorating sweets

And other baked goods are very varied. They have been decorated since ancient times different creams, fruits, chocolate chips, nuts and coconut flakes. A more complex option - filling with jelly, covering with fudge sugar, chocolate icing(ganache). Foreign ideas also came to us: mastic and icing. These are more complex options for covering baked goods, including a variety of figures and decorative elements. Icing decoration is considered top confectionery art. Some masters create masterpieces that simply take your breath away. However, knowing some secrets, every housewife, with a certain skill and a bit of patience, will be able to amaze her guests.

Icing - what is it?

From English this word is translated as “glaze”, the full name is “royal icing” (Royal Icing). Icing came to us from England, where pastry chefs at the court of royalty decorated cakes in this way. This is a mixture for painting and creating edible decorations based on protein and sugar. Icing can be different in composition and consistency depending on the purpose: contour decoration, airy decorations or modeling of products.

Plastic - used for sculpting jewelry and creating lace. Your helpers here will be a silicone mat for icing and molds). The mass is placed in the base, slightly dried, carefully removed and decoratively placed on the cake. Plastic icing is somewhat different from classic icing - its composition is closer to mastic.
Classic - a more liquid mass, which is applied directly to the confectionery product, or the decor is made on a stencil, and after hardening the parts are folded into figures. It has a very fragile structure.

We'll tell you how to make classic icing for gingerbread, cookies, cakes and other baked goods.

Cooking process

The icing recipe is actually incredibly simple. You will need:

powdered sugar - 150 g,
raw egg white - 1 piece,
lemon juice- 1 tsp.

This composition produces a fairly large volume of mass, which is enough to decorate a small cake or a kilogram of gingerbread. Any baked goods look much more appetizing with decor such as icing. How to cook it? Let's look at this process step by step.

Separate the white from the yolk. Make sure not a drop of yolk gets into the bowl with the white. If this happens, it is better to take another egg.
Beat the egg whites with a whisk or mixer at low speed. There is no need to whip it into a fluffy foam - just stir until smooth.
Add sifted mixture in small portions powdered sugar without ceasing to beat the mass.
Finally, add lemon juice to add shine to the glaze.

The perfect decoration for confectionery products is ready. Nothing complicated, right?

Consistency

The amount of powdered sugar and beating time may vary slightly depending on what your frosting is for. Icing is usually distinguished by density:

A mass of consistency of thick sour cream. It is obtained by using a slightly smaller volume of powder. Reminds us of our usual sugar icing, which is decorated Easter cakes. This type of icing is used for gingerbread and cookies, the top of which is poured into a uniform, even layer. You can check the readiness of the mass by running a knife over it. For some time, a mark from the cut remains, which gradually smoothes out, and the glaze again becomes homogeneous and perfectly smooth. If this does not happen, it means you beat the mixture too much, and this icing will no longer be suitable for filling - the top of the cookies will be ribbed and uneven. However, don’t be upset, because you just prepared the next version of the glaze.
Soft peaks. This icing is ideal for inscriptions and linear decoration, which is applied directly to the confectionery product. Readiness is checked very simply: remove the spoon or whisk from the protein mass - the glaze should hang from it in soft peaks, slightly bending depending on the rotation of the spoon.
Hard peaks. This is a denser mass. When you take out a spoon, the glaze follows it and remains on the surface in stable, hard peaks. This icing is ideal for squeezing patterns from a pastry bag with different nozzles directly onto a cake or cookie. This glaze is also suitable for complex decorations, which are first squeezed onto a stencil and, after hardening, assembled into shapes.

Little secrets

Royal icing seems incredible and you're scared to even try making it? Don't worry, use it classic recipe, pay attention to some nuances, and you will see that preparing icing will be easy. You will definitely succeed!

Color

The glaze can be colored using food coloring. To do this, divide the mixture into several parts and add the desired shade to each. Dyes come with different properties and degree of intensity, so add color little by little, kneading the mass well. Follow the instructions printed on the packaging.

Powdered sugar

Preparing icing is only possible with powder - sugar will not work here, as it will not have time to dissolve and will make the mass heavy. Moreover, it is advisable to sift the powdered sugar before saturating it with oxygen. If you have a good electric mill, you can grind your own powdered sugar.

Consistency

You can adjust the density of the mass. If you beat it too hard and it turns out too liquid, just add powdered sugar. If the icing is very thick, it will be difficult to squeeze out of the pastry bag. In this case, add egg white to it.

Storage

If you didn't use it all at once, you can store it in a tightly closed container for 3-5 days. Remember that the glaze hardens quickly when exposed to air. You can use the leftover icing for cookies. The recipe can be anything, with the exception of wet, too porous baked goods.

Lemon acid

If desired, a glaze component such as lemon juice can be replaced with citric acid.

Creating figures

If you create three-dimensional figures by squeezing the mass onto a stencil, lubricate it a little beforehand olive oil for easier separation of dried parts. Normal sunflower oil won't work here.

To create three-dimensional flowers and other figures, apply glaze to the stencil, and then place it on any curved surface. For example, a flower can be placed in a cup with the leaves facing out; butterflies - on the fold of the book (when they dry, you get a fluttering effect).

Large volumetric icing decorations are incredibly beautiful: shoes, carriages, houses, towers and more. It seems that this is impossible to do, but in reality everything is not so scary. These figures are made up of many individual parts, which are first applied to a stencil and dried, and then joined together with cream.

Remember that the average drying time for glaze is 12 hours, so apply ready cake it is needed in advance. Cookie icing also requires time to dry, otherwise the cakes will simply stick together. It is better to start preparing three-dimensional or prefabricated figures that are pre-applied onto a stencil a day before, so that they have time to dry well and are easy to assemble. Make them with reserve, because the parts are very fragile and can break during the assembly process.

Common mistakes

It seems like everything was done according to the recipe, but the icing didn’t work out? Here are the most common mistakes that can completely ruin the glaze:

Lemon juice must be added exactly according to the recipe - one teaspoon per white from one egg and 150 grams of powder. If you add too much egg white, the frosting will be too brittle.
Gently add powdered sugar depending on the desired consistency. A mixture that is too liquid will spread over the baked goods; a mixture that is too dense will be difficult to squeeze out of the pastry bag. Adjust the density of the icing using protein and powder.
The glaze requires air to dry. Do not place the decorated product or the drying parts of future figures in the refrigerator - the icing will become limp and flow.
For the same reason, do not apply the mixture to cream or wet biscuits. Ideal for application to dry cookies and cakes, pre-coated with a base - mastic, marzipan, ganache.

Accessories

You cannot do without auxiliary accessories if you prepare icing. What it is? First of all, a pastry bag. With classic royal icing It is impossible to work with any density by hand, so you cannot do without a pastry bag or syringe. Using various nozzles, you can create beautiful patterns, but more often the glaze is drawn in straight lines. Real helpers will be icing pencils, which act like a syringe, but with their help you create especially thin lines.

Stencils, silicone mats and molds help create complex patterned decorations that are difficult to make by hand. You can apply the pattern or its details on plain baking paper, after first placing the drawn outlines of the future product under it.

Decorations

Professional confectioners create real works of art from icing. It is not without reason that it is called royal icing - confectionery products decorated with it are truly worthy of kings. Let's reveal some secrets of the masters, using which you can cook at home beautiful jewelry from icing.

Cookie

Frosting cookies and gingerbread is a great way to start practicing. Drawings can be both simple and complex big amount small details. Icing for cookies, the recipe of which can be any (shortbread and ginger are good), can be of two types: soft peaks (for contours and designs) and the consistency of thick sour cream (for filling).

If you want to completely fill the surface of the cookie with icing, apply an outline along the edges, let it dry a little and fill the rest of the area with the soft mixture. The circuit will hold it back, preventing it from settling. Use fine line tips or icing pencils to create fine lines and patterns.

Lace of kings

The thin lace used to decorate cakes using icing looks incredibly beautiful. edible decoration made of very fine workmanship glaze. There are three options for creating it:

Applying plastic glaze to a silicone mat. After drying, this lace can be bent and styled as you like. It is quite convenient to use, but from classic glaze it can't be cooked.
Apply a lace design directly to the surface of the cake using a piping bag fitted with a fine tip or icing pencils.
Applying lace to a stencil. After drying, they are carefully transferred to baking.

Icing: master class

Airy lace covering the cake with a dome or decoration with balloons looks very beautiful, and it seems that it is impossible to do it by hand. However, having learned a couple of secrets, every housewife will be able to perform such a miracle. Of course, icing will help with this. How to cook it? We present step-by-step instructions:

Take a regular inflatable ball. Wash it well and inflate it to the size you want the final decor to be.
Prepare the frosting until it reaches the consistency of stiff peaks. The softer mass will simply drain and the pattern will not come out.
Fill a piping bag fitted with a thin tip or an icing pencil with the mixture.
Squeeze the icing with a thin branched thread over the ball, imitating lace, braiding the ball completely or halfway.
Leave to dry for at least 12 hours. After this, pierce the ball and carefully pull out the remains.

Just a magical cake decoration is ready!

Conclusion

From this article you learned everything about icing: what it is and how to prepare it. By adhering to simple rules, even at home you can create incomparable culinary masterpieces worthy of the highest praise.

As I already said, we will already use ready 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 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! Exact time you will have to find out for 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 and simply room temperature during few 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.

To create a real confectionery masterpiece at home, you need not only to properly knead the dough and bake delicious gingerbread or cake. An equally important step is decorating the baked goods. And here icing comes to the rescue, the recipes for which are simple and accessible to everyone. We invite you to our culinary master class.

Confectionery secrets

Icing is a thick plastic mass of granulated sugar and egg whites, used to decorate bulk baked goods. White icing is often made, but with the help of special dyes you can give it any shade.

Before we move on to recipes for icing at home, let's look at the features of working with it:

To apply icing to baked goods, you need to prepare templates in advance. These can be drawings on plain paper or ready-made special contours.
The template must be covered with film for food products. Attention: parchment paper and tracing paper are not suitable for this purpose, since the icing can stick to them, and accordingly, the drawing will be spoiled.
The film for food products should first be lubricated with olive oil.
Freshly prepared protein-sugar mass is applied using a pastry syringe. Experienced hostesses use a regular bag, cutting its corner.
It is important to achieve the correct icing consistency. So, the icing should not be too liquid, otherwise it will spread beyond the contour of the design. But the thick mass will be difficult to squeeze out of the syringe.
A little secret: if the icing turns out to be too thick, you can make any figures from it, like from plasticine.
Icing pattern on confectionery product It should not be thick, as this will make it difficult to dry.
The cling film with the finished pattern needs to be dried for about three days.
Do not apply icing to biscuits or other dry surfaces. In this case, you should decorate the product with icing only before serving the dessert.
Gingerbread cookies, cookies and other baked goods are decorated with icing only after the confectionery product has completely cooled.

Let's move on to the practical part of our master class and prepare icing for gingerbread cookies. The recipe is quite simple, the main thing is to make the glaze correctly. And so that the icing turns out perfectly, as they say, we will prepare the powdered sugar ourselves in advance. To do this, you need to grind granulated sugar in a coffee grinder.

Compound:

250 g powdered sugar;
1 egg white;
confectionery dyes.

Preparation:

Let’s complicate our task and make lace balls from icing to decorate the cake. To do this, we need to purchase several small balloons in advance and prepare the threads. Just remember that it will take 2-3 days for the icing to dry, and if you are planning a holiday, you need to do it in advance. Having mastered the principle of creating figures for decorating a cake from icing using a ball as an example, you will be able to create any designs in the future.

Compound:

1 egg white;
250 g powdered sugar;
olive oil;
¼ tsp. lemon juice.

Necessary materials:

5-6 pcs. small balloons;
food film;
baking paper;
threads

Preparation:

Cake decorating is a fun and creative process. Even tasty and original homemade baking will sparkle with new colors if you design it in a non-standard way. In this regard, decoration made from powdered sugar and egg white– has its advantages: it allows you to make figures of any shape, flowers and volume, openwork patterns, inscriptions. “Ice pattern,” as icing is also called, requires certain skills in its manufacture, since such decoration is very fragile, delicate, easily broken, but surprises with its tenderness and beauty.

The simplest recipe for decorating any baked goods, including homemade cakes. This design is especially relevant when preparing a cake for a wedding or anniversary.

Ingredients:

egg white – 1 piece;
citric acid - half a teaspoon;
powdered sugar – 200 grams;
olive oil for greasing.

Cooking process:

Prepare a silicone mat, foam sponge and scraper.
Separate the protein, stir it without beating.
Add powder little by little, and at the end - citric acid.
Stir by hand until the mixture thickens and becomes elastic.
Lightly grease a special rug with patterns embossed on it, but not too much - then the patterns will simply slide off the base.
Apply egg mixture to the entire mat, remove excess with a scraper, place the mat in the oven at 150 degrees for 2-5 minutes.
Be careful not to burn the lace. Their surface should remain snow-white.
Cool the finished icing, then use a knife to carefully separate the necessary parts of the pattern and decorate the cake.

Multi-colored convex icing figures

Volumetric openwork decorations are used to decorate cakes very often. These can be butterflies, balls, berries, or simply convex patterns. This decoration looks unusual and invariably attracts attention.

Ingredients:

a glass of powdered sugar;
food colors of several colors;
1 large protein;
half a teaspoon of lemon juice.

Cooking process:

Pour the protein into a clean container without traces of water or grease.
Beat it lightly with a whisk.
Gradually add powdered sugar. You may need more or less than what is indicated in the recipe, depending on the size of the egg.
Pour in the lemon juice at the end (strain it) and stir until the mixture thickens and turns snow-white.
Then divide the mixture into several containers and add a few drops of food coloring of the chosen color to each. If you want to use masses of different colors in one decoration, you cannot apply icing on top of each other. You must first wait until the first layer has completely hardened, and then apply the next one.
Transfer the mixture into a pastry bag with the narrowest nozzle.
Organize the drawing form: for a raised decoration, take something cylindrical (plastic cup, bottle) and wrap it in cling film.
Apply any design to the film and leave to air dry for at least 12 hours or more depending on the thickness of the icing lines.

You can make perfectly round openwork balls: apply the protein mixture onto a balloon inflated to the required size, then after drying, pierce it and carefully remove it from the decoration.

Flexible icing decoration

Decorating the side surfaces of the cake or creating intricate shapes requires that the icing should be sufficiently plastic, viscous, and not crumble during assembly. To create such a drawing mass, a more complex recipe is used.

Ingredients:

boiling water – 60 milliliters.
tylose (cellulose ester used in mastics and other decorations) - 1 tablespoon;
powdered sugar – 1 tablespoon;
dry proteins – 0.5 teaspoon;
corn starch - 2 teaspoons;
corn syrup - 0.5 teaspoon.

Cooking process:

Beat the tylose with water using a mixer.
Add powder, then starch, proteins and finally syrup. Stir before adding each new component.
Beat all the ingredients together for 4 minutes.
Store away from air icing unless you use it immediately.
The resulting plastic mass can be used to prepare flexible lace: a silicone mold with recesses for the lace is slightly greased with odorless oil, icing is laid out, and the excess is cleaned off with a scraper or just a wide knife. The molds are then left in the air to harden at least overnight.
The lace turns out not to crumble, is plastic and can be laid out on the side surfaces of the cake with sticky icing or jam, and flowers can also be formed from such lace.

Icing with glycerin

A less brittle, plastic and stable material for drawing - icing with glycerin - is used to decorate directly on the surface of the cake, create inscriptions and form fairly thick and large figures. Jewelry made from such a protein mass does not crumble as much and dries faster.

Ingredients:

whites – 4 pieces;
glycerin (can be bought at a pharmacy) – 10 milliliters;
powdered sugar – 900 grams;
strained lemon juice - half a teaspoon.

Cooking process:

Mix lemon juice and egg whites in a bowl. Grind them white.
In 5 approaches you need to introduce powder, which is first sifted through a very fine sieve.
At the end, pour in a portion of glycerin and mix by hand with a whisk.
Powder must be added as much as required by further use of icing. So, to create an openwork composition, the consistency of the mass should be quite thick; if you plan to fill the cake completely, you can make it liquid.
You can add to the mixture as desired food coloring to give the desired shade.

Working with icing requires caution, clean, grease-free dishes for mixing the protein mass and some equipment: a cornet, a pastry syringe, a scraper, cling film. It can be difficult to achieve the desired consistency of the mass the first time. However, after a few “trainings”, you will be able to decorate your homemade cake like a king and surprise your guests with your skill in decorating confectionery products.

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