What is mastic? It is a tight, sweet mass based on powdered sugar, reminiscent of dough in consistency. It is used to decorate cakes, muffins, gingerbread. A continuous coating is made from mastic, and various flowers, figures, numbers are also molded. You can cook it in several ways, and from the most affordable products. We bring to your attention mastic recipes tested by thousands of housewives, and share useful tips.

You will need:

With condensed milk

Ingredients:

• Powdered milk 150 g
• Powdered sugar 150 g
• Condensed milk 100 g
• Lemon juice 2 tbsp

Mix milk powder and powdered sugar, add condensed milk and knead until smooth. Add lemon juice. If the mass turned out to be viscous, add more milk and powder (necessarily in equal proportions). For piquancy, you can add a spoonful of cognac to the dough.

The finished mastic must be removed in the refrigerator for 12 hours, wrapped in cling film. Before rolling, it should lie down at room temperature for at least half an hour. Roll out with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1-2 mm. It is better to do this on cling film.

The amount indicated in the recipe is enough to cover a cake with a diameter of 24 cm.

Marshmallow mastic

Who does not know, these are small marshmallows of one or more colors. Mastic from them turns out non-sticky and convenient for work.

Option 1

• Powdered sugar 1.5 tbsp.
• Marshmallow 100 g
• Boiled water 1 tbsp.

Put the sweets in a bowl, add water and put in the microwave or in a water bath so that they spread. Mix well with a spoon until smooth.

When melting marshmallows in the microwave, select the maximum power and set the timer for 10 seconds.

Pour powdered sugar into a bowl and knead with your hands until the mass becomes elastic, similar to plasticine.

Option 2

• Powdered sugar 1-1.5 tbsp.
• Marshmallow 100 g
• Starch 0.5 tbsp.
• Melted butter 1 tsp
• Lemon juice 1 tbsp

Cooking is a little different from the previous one. Instead of water, give lemon juice and melted butter.

1. Powder can be mixed with starch in a ratio of 2: 1, but this is not necessary.
2. Put the dough on a table sprinkled with starch or powder, knead.

Marshmallow mastic should lie in the refrigerator for only 30 minutes. Wrap it in cling film first. The color of the finished dough will be the same as that of the marshmallow.

Honey

• Honey 130 ml
• Powder 950 g
• Water 50 ml
• Gelatin 1 pack

• Pour gelatin with water to swell. Mix with honey and keep in a steam bath until all the crystals melt.
• Sift the powder and knead with honey until elastic.

Don't be alarmed if the dough is very stiff at first, it will get a nice texture as you knead it.

• Further steps are standard - wrap in film and put in the refrigerator.

Sugar

Suitable for both covering the cake and sculpting figures of any complexity.

• Powdered sugar 500 g
• Gelatin 1 tsp
• Lemon juice 1 tsp
• Water 60 ml
• Vanillin pinch

1. Pour gelatin with water and leave to swell.
2. Heat in a water bath, at the end add lemon juice and vanillin. Cool down.
3. Add half the norm of powder and knead, gradually adding the rest.

Gelatinous

• Gelatin 10 g
• Powder 500 g
• Boiled water 50 ml

1. Pour gelatin with water for half an hour.
2. Then heat it over low heat until it boils, stirring constantly.
3. Cool to room temperature.
4. Enter half the required amount of powder and knead with a spoon.
5. Transfer to the table and knead with your hands, adding the rest of the powder.
6. Wrap in cling film and put in the refrigerator.

This mastic is perfect for sculpting figures - it quickly hardens and does not lose shape. But this property makes it unsuitable for covering the entire area of ​​the cake.

Chocolate mastic

This is the easiest mastic recipe at home.

• Chocolate 200 g
• Honey 70 g

You can take any chocolate: milk, white, black. The main thing is that it does not contain nuts, raisins or other additives.

1. Melt the tiles in a water bath, but try not to overheat the chocolate, otherwise it will curdle.
2. When the mass becomes liquid, add honey and mix thoroughly.
3. Put the mastic on the film, wrap tightly and put in the refrigerator for a day.

Working with such a mastic is not very convenient: it hardens very much in the cold, so you need to warm it up in the microwave for several minutes before rolling it out. She can melt. To avoid this, use only the right amount of mass or periodically place it in the refrigerator.

On vegetable oil

• Powder 2 tbsp.
• Gelatin 1 tbsp
• Protein 1 pc.
• Vegetable oil 2 tbsp
• Water 30 ml
• Glucose 1 tbsp.

Melt gelatin after swelling and cool. Add the rest of the ingredients to it and mix until smooth. Roll into a ball, put in a bag and send to the cold.

The dough is soft, elastic, shiny. It rolls out beautifully and lays down on the cakes without creating wrinkles.

Floral

• Gelatin 10 g
• Water 25 g
• Honey 40 g
• Butter 10 g
• Protein 1 pc.
• Powder 0.5 kg
• SMS (CMC) 4 g

1. Pour gelatin with water. After it swells, we give honey (artificial or natural), oil and put it in the microwave for a few seconds. We stir, we filter.
2. Separately, mix the sifted powder with 4 grams of SMS. Add protein and beat with a mixer for 5-7 minutes. Pour in the gelatin mixture and continue beating. Then switch to manual mixing.
3. Roll into a ball, place in a sealed bag and leave on the table for 8 hours, after which you can get to work.

Flower fondant allows you to make various cake decorations, including very delicate and small elements. It is easy to sculpt from it, the figures become hard and not brittle.

• Almonds 1 tbsp.
• Sugar 1 tbsp
• Lemon for zest 2 pcs.
• Protein 2 pcs.

Peel nuts, wash and grind into powder. Add sugar and zest first, and then add proteins. Thoroughly and conscientiously knead the mass and put it in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours.

Suitable for wrapping and sculpting. If you need to create figurines with small details, use slightly fewer nuts than the recipe calls for.

• Powdered sugar should be taken of the finest grinding and always sifted - the smallest grains will tear the dough.
• During cooking, food coloring and flavorings can be added to the mixture. It is best to use special paints for mastic.

Sometimes the finished mastic begins to crumble. In this case, it is enough to add a little water or lemon juice to it and knead again.

• If the dough is too sticky, add a little powder.
• It happens that when wrapping the cake, the mastic breaks. No need to be nervous, just dip a brush in water and “plaster” the gap.

A very dense mass is difficult to roll out, but it is great for cakes with a lot of cream. Although in general, wet cakes are not covered with mastic.

Video to the material

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Not so long ago, mastic figurines began to be used to decorate cakes. But ordering a cake from a professional confectioner is not always affordable, and there is no way to control the quality of the ingredients used in the process of baking and assembling the dessert. In this case, the output will be a hand-made decor.

A detailed description of all stages of work, from choosing the necessary tool and making mastic at home to the algorithm for sculpting individual characters, will help master the sweet sculpture even for those who last sculpted at school in fine arts.

Every mother wants to please her child with a beautiful and tasty cake. One way to decorate it is with mastic figures.

The manufacturing process includes the following steps:

1. Preparation of sugar mass for modeling.
2. Direct modeling of figurines.
3. Drying the finished decor and installing it on the cake.

What tools and materials will be required to create sweet sculptures will be discussed in more detail below.

If there are doubts about whether it will be possible to make a mastic decor on your own, you can always pre-train on plasticine, and when you achieve the desired result, start sculpting from mastic.

What tools are needed for sculpting

In confectionery stores, your eyes simply run wide from a wide range of all kinds of devices for working with mastic, therefore, in order not to buy too much, it is better to familiarize yourself in advance with what certain tools are needed.

Mastic confectioners use for such purposes:

• covering the finished cake to give the surface smoothness or a certain texture (wood, leather, etc.);
• to create flower arrangements (sugar floristry);
• creation of miniature sculptures (people, animals, fairy-tale and cartoon characters).

Each type of mastic decor uses its own tools.

So, in order to cover the finished cake with sugar mass, you need to have:

• rolling pin for mastic (regular or textured);
• silicone rolling mat;
• and iron to smooth out the coating to avoid creases.

In sugar floristry are used:

• cuttings or plungers of flowers or their petals;
• silicone veiners to give the blanks a more natural look;
• soft mat for thinning the edges of leaves and petals;
• fixtures (tables) for drying blanks,
• food wire and artificial stamens;
• brushes with artificial bristles.

To sculpt figures from mastic, you need to purchase a set of special stack tools:

• Dresden stick for depicting facial expressions;
• stack-cone (rounded, even), which will allow you to make non-through cone-shaped recesses;
• shell tool for sculpting animal paws, shells, human hands and feet;
• stack-bone will help create frills on clothes or wavy edges
• a tool with balls at the ends is used to form eye sockets or other round indentations;
• stack-arc to create smiles on the faces of figures of mastic people.

In addition to these tools, you will need food coloring for coloring the mastic, brushes (required with artificial bristles) and food glue for gluing the details of the figure.

We prepare mastic for modeling with our own hands

Before you make figures for the cake, you need to prepare the sugar mass for modeling.

Putty for creating flowers and figures should be pliable so that it is easy to work with, and dry quickly so as not to spend a lot of time drying the figures.

These properties are possessed by mastic prepared from:

• 1 ½ teaspoons instant gelatin;
• 40 ml of water;
• 3 teaspoons of liquid honey or syrup (invert, glucose or any other);
• 2 teaspoons butter or any other solid fat (margarine, coconut oil);
• 1 teaspoon of liquor (can be replaced with other alcohol);
• 500 g of powdered sugar;
• 25 g corn or potato starch.

Cooking technology:

1. Soak gelatin for the time indicated in the instructions for its use.
2. Combine syrup, oil and liqueur in a saucepan and heat until smooth. Then add the swollen gelatin and heat until it is completely dissolved.
3. Sift the powder with starch in a slide, in the center of which make a funnel. Pour the liquid component into the recess and knead the mass, like a regular yeast dough.
4. Put the finished mass into a tight bag, lubricated from the inside with butter, expel all the air as much as possible and leave the mastic to lie down for a day at room temperature. After that, you can start sculpting.

The simplest mastic figures for beginners

Simple figurines of animals that do not pretend to be sculptural similarities are molded using one technology:

1. Roll up a ball for the body and shape it into a teardrop shape.
2. The head is just a slightly smaller ball that is connected to the body with a toothpick.
3. The front and hind legs are molded from mastic flagella, which are glued with food glue or raw protein.
4. Next, ears are molded: for a bunny - from two wide flagella-stripes, for a cat or a tiger (lion) - pointed triangles, for a bear, a monkey - two circles with a recess in the center.
5. Also from the flagellum, but thinner, form a tail. If necessary, they sculpt a hairstyle, for example, a mischievous forelock for a monkey or a mane for a lion.
6. They finish sculpting the animal figurine with the design of the muzzle - nose, mouth, eyes.

It is easy to make various cars out of mastic that will be appropriate on a boy's cake.

The easiest option is from a single piece of mastic:

1. Shape the body of the car into a single rectangular piece of mastic of the corresponding color.
2. From four balls, blind wheel-washers and glue them into place.
3. From thinly rolled white or pale blue mastic, cut out glass (front, rear and side) and also attach them where necessary.
4. From small balls of yellow mastic, make headlights.
5. Make the necessary additions, for example, inscriptions or eyes, and the machine is ready.

Master class on how to sculpt children's mastic figures

Children's figurines made of mastic are usually the heroes of their favorite cartoons. Among the huge number of fairies, little animals, robots and cars, the heroes of the cartoon "Smeshariki" will be ideal for a novice sculptor. Their modeling is carried out according to a principle similar to that already described.

First, the mastic is dyed in the desired color (or colors), then a ball-body is rolled out of it, and then they act as follows:

1. Bunny Krosh. For the arms and legs, roll up two bundles, cut each of them in half and use a stack or a regular toothpick to separate the fingers. Form ears from two wide strips. Then it remains only to shape the face by gluing eyes from white mastic, and eyebrows from blue mastic, draw pupils and a smile.
2. Barash. Roll up thin flagella, form curls from them and glue them with food glue or egg white. Shape the arms and legs in the same way as Krosh's paws, but make hooves at the ends. From flagella of darker mastic, fashion horns. Shape the face.
3. Hedgehog. Roll up small balls of blue mastic, give them the shape of needle cones and glue them onto a spherical body. Sculpt arms and legs, as for a bunny. Add glasses, eyebrows, nose, ears, smile and the Hedgehog is ready.
4. Nyusha. First you need to draw heart-cheeks and mold paws with hooves, as for Barash. From a small ball, form a nose-piglet by making two indentations in it with a toothpick. Weave and glue a pigtail hairstyle, shape the face.

How to dry figures from mastic

Sculpting mastic figures is only half the battle. They also need to dry properly. When the figures dry unevenly, they can crack, and if the drying temperature is too high, they melt, and nothing can save the result of long work. All the subtleties of this process and ways to speed it up will be discussed below.

The simplest and most correct, but also the longest drying method is self-drying at room temperature. Depending on their size, the figurines can take up to several days to dry.

Large figures, consisting of several parts, are usually dried unassembled, and then all the elements are glued together using confectionery glue, raw egg white or vodka. During drying, the figurines or their parts must be covered with napkins so that they do not fall with dust. Also, the wipes will absorb some of the moisture.

If time permits, then the figures should be dried only at room temperature.

And if you urgently need to make a decoration from mastic, then you can speed up the drying in one of the following ways:

1. Fen. Dry the mastic decor much faster by blowing it at a considerable distance with a hair dryer operating in the “Cold air” mode. In this way, you can dry the figures in just a few hours.
2. Oven. Using an oven, you can quickly dry flat mastic decorations (for example, letters), but the drying temperature should not exceed 80 - 85 degrees, and its duration should not exceed 5 minutes.
3. Microwave. The principle of drying is the same as in the oven. Figures heated in a microwave oven harden after cooling. But due to the different power of the devices, the drying time will have to be selected empirically on a small piece of mastic mass.

How much and how such jewelry is stored

Cake fondant figurines can be made ahead of time before baking and assembling the dessert, but to keep them soft enough on the inside and edible, they need to be stored properly. Storage conditions for this decor: sealed container, placed in a cool place away from direct sunlight. The shelf life of the decor, subject to these rules, will be within 1 - 2 months.

After eating dessert, sweet sugar sculptures can be left as a memory of the solemn event. In this case, the storage conditions are not so harsh: the figurines can simply be placed on a shelf that is not exposed to direct sunlight so that their colors stay bright longer. But eating them after that is not recommended.

In this article I will try to detail some of the features of making mastic jewelry with your own hands for beginners.

Basics

I am often asked about what kind of mastic is better to sculpt figures. For a while I worked with both store-bought fondant made from various recipes and sugar paste, but I always came back to my recipe because I know how to tailor it to my needs.

Here I will not describe the process of making complex figures, but I will simply try to tell in detail about how to make figures from mastic with my own hands. We will be making a person with relatively realistic body proportions and simple clothing. I am sure that everyone who follows these instructions will eventually learn how to create excellent fondant figures for children's cake, and that this knowledge will help in the future when moving on to more complex techniques and making figures with outstretched arms, as well as modeling animals from mastic.

If you have any questions about how to sculpt figurines from mastic, feel free to ask them in the comments. I will try to answer them as quickly as possible, but still remember that I am a busy person, so do not expect immediate answers from me.

Remember that all this is not the ultimate truth, but just my own work, and you may have a different view on how to make figures from cake fondant. Therefore, there are no hard and fast rules here, other than perhaps the placement of parts, so tailor these tips to your needs and preferences.

Necessary materials and tools

In my work, I try to avoid unnecessary expensive tools and often use what I already have at home. I will stick with this idea in this tutorial and will try to keep the amount of stuff you need to make sugar paste figurines to a minimum.

To make a simple mastic figurine, you will need:

• Mastic of different colors for the manufacture of the following parts: pants, boots, sweaters, leather, hair;
• Several toothpicks. Note: Do not give fondant products containing toothpicks to small children and be sure to warn everyone else that they are contained inside. You can replace them with hard pasta if you wish, let everyone know anyway;
• Salt shaker with powdered or corn syrup, whichever you prefer. If you don't have a salt shaker, you can use a spoon instead;
• Cutting board (as smooth as possible);
• Sharp, non-serrated knife;
• Small or medium ball-shaped mastic tool;
• Small pastry brush;
• Water in a small container;
• Black food gel coloring;
• The surface on which you will place the figures, such as a cake or, if you make them in advance, a piece of foam;
• A printed sketch of a person (see below).

Through trial and error, I realized that as I made figures from mastic, each next detail turned out to be larger than the previous one, and as a result, I got disproportionate crafts from mastic. It was also difficult for me to make several figures of the same size if I did it by eye. For this reason, I started using sketches similar to the one above and the mastic cake figures began to turn out to be the right size for me. Just upload this sketch to any graphic editor (I use Irfanview), set the desired height of the future figure and print the sketch. This approach can also be applied when decorating a cake to figure out how to arrange the figures and what sizes they should be.

The height of the figurine described in this article is 6.3 cm.
Putty is usually sticky, so to roll it out properly and avoid sticking to the board and fingers, dust your work surface and hands with powdered sugar. Don't worry about the whole figurine being covered in powdered sugar; you can easily clean it up afterwards.

To glue the pieces of mastic, apply a thin layer of water to one of them with a brush and press them together. You may need to move them around a bit to stick them together, but usually just water is enough. Some people like to use different types of store-bought or homemade edible glue, but I usually don't bother with this. Water glues perfectly in almost all cases.

If you are working in a dry area, you may need to soften your putty to prevent cracking of the surface. To do this, just mix a small amount of water into the dough and warm it in your hands. Try to do everything quickly so that the mastic does not have time to dry and start to crack. In humid conditions, you may need to mix in additional powdered sugar and increase the time between stages so that the parts of the figure do not mix.

We sculpt a person

Roll out a long snake from blue mastic. Make sure its thickness matches the thickness of the leg on the printed sketch. Don't worry about it getting too long - you can always cut off the excess.

Using the blunt side of the knife, make a notch in the middle of the snake and bend the mastic along it.

Lay the bent snake over the sketch so that the bent edge is near the hips. Trim the bottom of the pants if necessary.

Turn the pants over and lay next to the sketch. Using the blunt part of the knife, make indentations at the knees. They will help prevent the formation of wrinkles when bending.

Gently turn the knife a few times to make the indentation wider. The back of the legs should look like this:

If you are going to decorate the cake right now, you can wet the back of your feet with water and place them on the edge of the cake. I made a figurine on foam, so I’ll tell you about the features of this case later.

Put a handful of powdered sugar on the surface and, gently bending your knees, place them on the edge of the foam.

For greater stability of the figure, you can moisten the gap between the pants and carefully, so as not to damage the shape, press one leg to the other.

Make two even balls of black fondant a little larger than in the sketch (boots require more paste than feet without them, unless you are making thin slippers of course). To get the same balls, you can use such a tricky trick: make a thick sausage with flattened ends out of mastic and cut it in half.

Shape the balls into water droplets, but without the pointy end at the top, and then press down lightly.

Break a toothpick in half and insert each into the bottom of your legs. Leave the protrusion just long enough to hold the boot.

Wet the top and sides of the boots (and the back if you're decorating the cake now) with water and slide them over the protruding parts of the toothpicks.

Insert a toothpick into the top of the legs so that it goes a little deeper into the foam, but make sure that there is enough length on top to put the body on it.

Make a mastic bar that is wider on one side. Its thickness may vary depending on the size of your figure. I find that 1.3 cm thickness is suitable for most cases.

Now put it on the sketch. The upper edge of the bar should reach the shoulders, respectively, the lower edge - to the legs. The bar should be level near the shoulders, but you can make an indentation in the opposite part of it if you want the sweater to go over the pants a little.

After adding some water, put the body on a toothpick and press it on top so that it sticks to the legs.

Press down on the bar from the bottom along the sides so that its edges are in line with the hips.

Roll out a long snake from the mastic of the same color as the body, put it on the sketch along the line of the hand and cut off the excess, while not taking into account the length of the hand and fingers, which we will do next. From above, cut the snake along the vertical line of the body (at an acute angle).

If you need to make hands that would be in a horizontal position, then the angle needs to be made more obtuse. The sharp angle is needed so that the hands are close to the body, and the hands of the figurine are on the knees, because in this case it will not be necessary to make any internal supports or wait for the mastic to harden.

Do the same with the other hand, while checking that they are the same length.

Mark the elbow bend with the blunt side of the knife.

Bend your arm along the line, and from the back side with your fingertips make elbows. Unlike the knees, the elbows should be slightly pointed. If the arm becomes loose after this, add a little water to the crook of the elbow and press lightly to seal the edges of the indentation.

Using a ball tool, make small indentations at the base of the arms. They are needed so that the hands look like extensions of the arms, and not as if they were torn off the body and then glued back on.

Moisten the surface of the hand that will be adjacent to the body with water and press it against the torso and leg. As you do this, shape your shoulders as needed.

Don't place the bases of the arms close together, unless you're going to do folded arms. And this will most likely be difficult to do without bending them at an unnatural angle.

Then insert another toothpick into the torso from above, this will be the inner support for the head. Stick it deep enough so that it does not come out of the head on the other side.

Leave the hands to harden for a while before you start making the palms.

From the flesh-colored mastic, roll out a drop-shaped ball and place it on the sketch. The ball should slightly cover the contours of the head on the sketch, but no more. In general, it is better to make the head a little smaller, since due to the hair it can be enlarged later.

It is usually difficult for beginners to do a bare neck well, so it is better to replace it with a sweater collar. To do this, make a small thick cylinder of mastic and put it on a toothpick.

Make a small indentation in front.

Take the head made in the previous steps and put it on the toothpick at an angle. The chin should look forward, otherwise the head will look like a ball.

Using a ball-shaped tool, make small holes for the eyes.

From a very small piece of fondant, roll out a drop-shaped ball and press it down with your fingers.

Then attach it to the head so that its sharp top is flush with the brow ridges.

Make the nostrils with a toothpick, while taking it a little to the side to indicate the shape of the nose.

The mouth can be made in two ways: draw or cut. You can cut out the mouth with the tip of a sharp knife.

When you're done, lightly press down on the bottom half of your mouth with the knife to define the bottom lip.

With a toothpick, form the lower part of the lip and, with slight pressure, cover the mouth of the figurine.

Use the sharp end of a toothpick to shape the top lip in the middle, making a small notch.

The easiest way to mold hands is to make them in the form of mittens. For those who want to make more realistic outlines of the hands, below are detailed instructions.

Roll out a hand-sized piece of fondant on the template and shape it into a drop shape, as you did in the previous steps for the head and nose.

Then decide which hand you are doing: right hand or left hand. Put your hand next to the piece of fondant to see which way the thumb should be turned.

Make a wedge cut as shown in the photo below.

Draw a knife to indicate the thumb.

Cut out another small piece to give the finger the desired shape.

Make cuts to form the rest of the fingers.

Gently smooth the sharp corners with your fingers.

With a ball tool, form light indentations in the palms.

Turning the hand and pressing it lightly with your fingers, make a round wrist.

After adding some water to the leg and sleeve, insert the wrist there. Nails can be marked with the tip of a toothpick.

Make the other hand in the same way as above.

One of the easiest ways to make hair is to mold it into a hat or pot. Take a piece of mastic and shape it like in the picture below. It should have a flat surface on the bottom and a slightly convex top.

While pressing the mastic with your thumb and forefinger, turn it.

When shaping your hair, always check how it will look on your head to find the right size. When you get the right size, pinch the hair around the edges so it's thin and doesn't look like a helmet.

Moisten the inner surface of the hair with water and gently attach to the head.

To make curls, run a sharp knife along the edge of the hair a couple of times.

Long hair can easily be made by simply pressing the mastic on one side more than the other.

If you decide to mold the ears on the figurine, make small cuts in the hair, as shown below.

Tear off a small piece of mastic and give it the same shape as in the photo.

With the sharp end of a toothpick, make two holes in the piece.

Connect these pits with a groove, while pressing to the side to form the edge of the ear. Poke a hole in the bottom of the ear.

Keep improving the shape until you are happy with the result.

Anoint with a wet brush the ear in the center on the outside, which will be adjacent to the head, and attach it in place.

Look at the figurine from several angles to make sure that the ears do not stick out.

Draw eyebrows and eyes with black gel dye.

The figurine is ready!

I hope that now you don’t have a question about how to make a figurine from mastic for a cake and surprise your family and friends with your masterpiece.