Cream recipes for mastic. Ganache recipe - a stable cream for cake coating and cupcake decoration at home with a photo step by step

Cream for a cake is associated with a fat oil cream, you can often hear "I like that piece where there is less cream and flowers." But today, in the world of modern desserts, there is a light, low-fat cream without butter that holds its shape well, which can be used to level a cake or decorate a product with flowers. A big plus of such a curd cream is also that you can control the amount of sugar to your liking, unlike oil creams, where clear large amounts of sugar are needed, otherwise the consistency will not be the same.

Be sure to try decorating the cake with such curd cream on cream.

This amount of cream is enough to cover a sponge cake Ø20 cm H 9-10 cm, but of course everything will depend on the evenness of the cakes, on the type of coating, on whether you will make a curd layer between the biscuits, etc.

Ingredients

• Curd cheese - 500-540 g
• Cream 33% - 120 g
• Powdered sugar - 70 g

Cooking process

Cream for cream needs to be cooled well for a couple of hours, because they will need to be whipped, and cold cream is whipped better. Use good cream with at least 33% fat, otherwise the cream will turn out to be too liquid.

Shops offer a wide selection of Philadelphia-type curd cheeses at different prices, just don't confuse it with processed cream cheese, see the composition, it will contain cottage cheese, sour cream.

Whip the cream for 5-10 minutes, depending on the amount, they should become foamy and thick, visually increase in volume.

Add cottage cheese to whipped cream. Beat until smooth.

Add powder in parts, whisking all the time. Even if the cheese is slightly salty - don't let that bother you, the sugar will only accentuate the taste. Taste the cream. If you have sweet biscuits, the cream can be made quite slightly sweet.

To make it convenient to work with cottage cheese cream, place it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to stabilize, it will become even thicker and more obedient.

Transfer the cream into a pastry bag with a round nozzle, or simply cut off the tip of the bag.

How is cake leveling done?

For the first time, apply the curd cream in a thick layer, level with a special confectionery spatula, place in the refrigerator for 10 minutes, and in the refrigerator, if possible, lower the temperature so that it cools faster. With a chilled cream, it is easier to achieve even surfaces, it is convenient to align the sides.

Cream for mastic is one of the important conditions for the success of your efforts to create a beautiful and delicious dessert. The cake should be covered with a cream that evens out the cakes and does not cause the mastic to flow.

Creams such as yogurt, sour cream, and whipped cream are too light in texture and low in density and, as a rule, do not do their job well.

Therefore, you need to choose a cream that will not leak with 100% probability and will allow you to give the cake a finished, neat look. Butter creams and custards work best for this task.

Protein-oil cream for mastic - a classic recipe

This is the simplest and most popular leveling cream among those craftswomen who often bake cakes decorated with fondant.

For its manufacture you will need:
3 large eggs;
sugar - about 150 gr;
salt - to taste;
butter (fat content not lower than 80%) - 200 gr.

How to prepare a smoothing cream for mastic

For work, we only need egg whites - add all 3 to a metal container, add salt and sugar there and put in a water bath.

Do not forget to constantly stir the mass with a whisk. Proteins need to be heated until the sugar dissolves. Then remove the container from the water bath and set aside to cool.

During this time, we will work with the oil base of the cream. Note that the oil must be chosen as fresh as possible and must be allowed to melt before starting work. Therefore, it is better to put the oil in advance in a warm place - so that it becomes soft.

Beat soft butter with a mixer until a homogeneously fluffy mass, into which then gradually pour in the cooled proteins, continuing to beat.

Ready leveling cream for the cake - lush and airy, shiny and uniform.

How to level the cake with cream for mastic:

The task of our cream is to smooth out all the irregularities on the cakes and prepare the product for covering with mastic.

We all want the finished cake to look neat and for this we suggest you level the cakes with cream in three stages.

1. We apply a thin layer of protein-oil cream on the cakes and send it to the refrigerator to harden. At this stage, crumbs and small irregularities in the cakes are usually smoothed out.
2. We apply a new layer of cream on the cakes - thick and generous enough to even out bumps and other irregularities. We send the cake back to the refrigerator so that the cream can harden faster.
3. The mastic cake now needs to be processed with a hot knife in order to smooth out all the bumps in the cream and bring the surface to a perfectly even state. And again we send the cake to the refrigerator.
4. Now the cake is perfectly even, covered with a neat layer of delicious cream and ready to be covered with mastic.

How to make cream Charlotte for mastic

In addition to protein-oil, you can use delicious and fairly easy-to-make Charlotte cream as a leveling cream for mastic. This delicious cream has a thick and fluffy texture and doesn't run, making it the perfect choice for leveling a cake before frosting.

How to do it at home is shown in detail in this video tutorial:

Custard oil cream for mastic

Very tasty and well leveling the surface of the cake is custard for mastic with white chocolate and butter.

To prepare it, we need:

2 white chocolate bars without additives;
flour of the highest grade - 2.5 tbsp. spoons with a slide;
low-fat milk, fresh - 250 ml;
fresh butter, not less than 80% fat - 200 gr;
vanilla sugar - a teaspoon with a slide.

Cooking process:

1. Pour the milk into a metal container and begin to beat with a whisk, gradually pouring flour and vanilla sugar into it. Try to stir the components very carefully, until smooth.
2. We send the milk base of the cream under the mastic to a low fire and heat it, stirring constantly and not allowing the mass to stick to the walls. Cook until thickened.
3. As soon as the cream thickens, remove it from the stove and pour the pre-broken chocolate into it. Stir the mixture until the chocolate is completely melted.
4. Set aside the base for the cream - let it cool. During this time, you need to beat the soft butter in a blender until light and airy. Then, in parts, add the custard part of the cream to this mass, bring to uniformity. Everything - you can cover them with a cake under mastic!

Ganache mastic cream - how to cook at home

Another cream that is ideal for leveling cakes and preparing the cake for covering with mastic is Ganache. This creamy chocolate cream perfectly levels the cakes, does not flow and has excellent taste.

You can see how to make homemade ganache cream in this video tutorial:

Cream is now gaining popularity, customers are increasingly refusing mastic, and homemade confectioners begin their journey in the confectionery art with cream cakes.
In September 2015, we started teaching lessons on cream cakes in Malaysian technique, and in March 2016 we launched “Art cake”, in both cases we are working with cream.
I began to receive a lot of questions - “Why did the cream separate water”, “Why does the cream crack” and many others.
On my Vkontakte page, I asked you to ask questions, the answers to which you will receive in this and subsequent materials.

Let's figure it out. I do not just want to answer all your questions with one article, I want to convey to you information on working with the cream so that you yourself become experts.

So, what affects the cream itself, with which we smeared the cake? To do this, I drew this simple drawing.

1. The filling of the cake will affect the cream.
2. What does the cream consist of.
3. What is the temperature around the cake.
4. The stand on which the cake stands.

Let's take the first point. How can the filling of the cake affect the cream on the outside?

First

It is very important to choose the right cake filling that you want to cover with cream. If you smear a cake with dry cakes, for example “Napoleon”, then the following will happen with the cream: dry cakes will begin to draw water out of the cream and cracks will appear, the cream will literally begin to dry out.

Second

Be sure to stand the cake, let it “ripen”. What does it mean? The cream with which you glued the cakes needs to harden (especially if gelatin is present in the composition), and the cakes must take away excess moisture from the cream, so when the cake stands, moisture should be distributed and it will become denser.
How long does "Aging" take? It all depends on the filling, but on average in the refrigerator 2-3 hours. If you speed up this process in the freezer, the process will take no more than 30 minutes.

There are cakes that stand for 8-12 hours, for example, "Napoleon", "Honey cake" and they cannot be frozen.
Once, at one of the lessons, a student asked me why mastic and cream give waves on some cakes, while everything is fine on others. We began to analyze with her why this happened, where she violated the process. It turned out that this happened only with urgent orders, when the cake was made in 3 hours.
The process was very fast, a simple biscuit was baked, cooled a little, smeared with cream, the sides were decorated with cream, berries on top, and when transferred to the box, the cake for some reason gave waves on the sides. I think you guessed that the technology of cake standing was violated, and in the cake the cakes simply “slid” over the cream.

Third

The amount of biscuit and cream in the cake should be evenly distributed. Once at a lesson, a student was smearing a cake and she didn’t do it very well, the cake was prepared by the interns in our studio, it stood overnight in the refrigerator, but the smearing did not work out. When they began to find out, it turned out that when assembling the cake there was a lot of cream between the lowest biscuit and the next one, and under the load of the remaining layers, it rolled and it was difficult to coat the cake, since it was constantly shifting at the bottom.

Second point. What is the cream made of?

Below you can see the table of classification of creams compiled by me. Creams are a very big topic, and we won't go into too much depth. We are only interested in those that are suitable for coating.

At the moment, the most common cream is cream cheese. It can be butter or cream based. The main mistake when decorating with this cream is as follows: after coating the cake, it is put in the freezer for 2 hours, and when you take it out, the cream begins to melt, this happens if you took not very high-quality cheese or mascorpone as a basis. After freezing, the cheese breaks down into water and fat, and the cream begins to flow from the cake. But it can also happen to quality cheese if it's been frozen in the store, so don't risk freezing the cream on a mascarpone-based cake.

When working with cream cheese, there is one secret. For coating, take the proportions of 2/5, 2 parts of cream or softened butter and 5 parts of cheese, so the cream will be more plastic and keep its shape.

They coat the cake with custard, but the composition should contain a sufficient amount of oil, about 20%, this gives the cream plasticity, you also need to coat it only with a cooled cream that has stood in the refrigerator for at least an hour, otherwise the flour that is in the composition will continue to swell and Later, the cream will become a windy crust and cracks will appear.

Oil based cream. There are several classic recipes, mainly in "Italian" and "Swiss" meringue, as they are best suited for decorating the sides of the cake. The fat content of these creams is about 40-50%, which is much less than in cream cheese. Oil for such a cream, take the most dense and natural, with any fat content.

Hi all. Recently, I promised to tell you about a super cream for topping cakes, which perfectly holds its shape and matches the fondant. This is cream ganache. Today is a very detailed article about this cream.

Ganache is an emulsion of cream and chocolate. Do you know how this wonderful cream appeared? Like so many things in cooking - completely by accident! A French chef accidentally spilled cream into melted chocolate, after which the chef called him a "fool", which in French sounds like "ganache". When he tried what he got, he was amazed by the taste, well, and this name stuck to the dessert.

What do we have today? There are three varieties of ganache - on cream, on butter, and on cream with the addition of butter. Many argue that ganache in oil, in general, should not be called that, that this is the “wrong” cream. And that real ganache is only made from chocolate and heavy cream. May be so.

However, I use in practice all three types of this cream. Why not choose one? Because all three varieties are absolutely working creams!

If I have enough fat cream, then I definitely choose the creamy option, if there is cream, but there are not many of them, then I make a mixture, if there is no cream at all, then I choose the option with butter.

I want to note that the most delicious and light, both in terms of cooking and eating, is the cream option. The butter recipe is the hardest to digest, but the butter and cream mixture is the hardest to prepare.

Ganache can be made on any chocolate, be it dark, milk or white (it is also possible from bitter, but this is already quite an amateur).

The main thing here is to understand the proportions.

Ganache on dark chocolate goes to cream (or butter) in a 1:1 ratio, for milk chocolate this ratio is 2:1, and for white 3:1 (sometimes even 4:1, for greater stability). That is, the less cocoa butter is contained in chocolate, the more it will be required for the cream.

These proportions work absolutely for all creams, that is, if you take 180 grams of dark chocolate (2 bars), then you need to take the same amount of cream or butter by weight.

Today I want to analyze a ganache made from a mixture of chocolate and cream, because it is in this version that the most mistakes are made, due to the fact that there are more actions in cooking.

Needless to say, the cream will come out delicious with professional chocolate?! Callebaut is a very good chocolate and cocoa company. You can also buy by weight from 100 grams in pastry shops.

So, how to make a stable cream for leveling a cake and decorating cupcakes at home, a recipe with photos step by step.

Ingredients:

1. 180 grams of dark chocolate (2 bars)
2. 75 grams of cream from 30% fat
3. 105 grams butter (82.5%) at room temperature

Cooking:

To begin with, I want to say right away that my friendship with ganache did not come out the first time! But, from this I can safely say that I know all the subtleties and possible errors)

I will offer you the most reliable method, with the least possible complications. To begin with, I will write the problems that I encountered so that you do not repeat my mistakes.

According to many recipes, it was necessary to first melt the chocolate, heat the cream separately, and only then combine these two mixtures. Here I had such problems as: overheating of chocolate and stratification of the mass. Firstly, chocolate is extremely easy to overheat in the microwave, especially when you heat it without cream. Secondly, by combining melted chocolate and hot cream, it is also possible to overheat it, and, well, the stratification of the mass due to the temperature difference.

According to other recipes, it was necessary to finely chop the chocolate and pour hot cream over it. Here, problems such as overheating of chocolate may arise, due to the fact that chocolate is heated at a temperature much lower than the boiling point of cream. And another problem may arise - incomplete dissolution of chocolate, if the cream is removed from the stove ahead of time. And this had to be solved by heating the mass and punching it with a hand blender.

After all my adventures, I will say one thing - do not waste so much time! Melt chocolate with cream in a water bath, this is the most reliable method!

So, how to make dark chocolate ganache with cream at home.

We put a saucepan with a small amount of water on the stove.

Place the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl. And fill it with cream (I have cream straight from the refrigerator).

As soon as the water in the pan boils, reduce the fire to medium and put our bowl with the chocolate-cream mass on top.

Stirring all the time, we begin to melt the chocolate. The chocolate will clump a little at first.

Then it will gradually begin to diverge.

As a result, we should get a homogeneous mass without lumps, smooth and shiny.

We remove it from the fire and leave to cool to 40 °.

In the cooled mass, we introduce butter at room temperature! This is a very important point, if the oil is cold, the cream will delaminate. In this case, it must be warmed up a little in a water bath and pierced with an immersion blender.

Mix the mass thoroughly.

Cover with cling film and refrigerate for 1-2 hours. The hardening time depends on the quality of the chocolate, the better it is, the faster it will set.

During this time, the cream will stabilize and become very dense. Feel free to start leveling cakes, decorate cupcakes or use it as a filling.

This amount of cream is enough for me to level the cake in 18-20 diameter.

If you beat the cooled ganache, you get a truffle cream. It will increase in volume, brighten and become very airy. I even like this option more, it is very easy to work with it, the cream is malleable. They are also great to decorate cupcakes, use in a layer of biscuit cakes or as a filling. A little secret, it is better to level with a hot dry spatula, so the cream softens a little, if suddenly it is completely frozen.

It is only worth remembering that the ganache cream is dense and will not fully soak your cakes, so we either use impregnation or self-sufficient butter biscuits.

This cream is very stable, it hardens as they say "to stone". If you are looking for what kind of cream you can cover the cake with mastic, then this is your option. The mastic does not flow on it.

If you are looking for what kind of cream you can level your cakes in the heat, then this is also the best cream.

What to do if the cake has to be transported by car for a long time? Use ganache!

If you are looking for which cream a waffle or sugar picture will not flow on, the answer is the same, this is ganache.

In addition to being used in cakes and cupcakes, this cream is ideal for filling cakes such as macarons, shou, profiteroles or eclairs. Chocolate lovers will definitely appreciate it!

A few answers to the most common questions.

What does overheated chocolate look like? It becomes dense, gathers in pieces and does not shine! Can it be saved? It is possible, but not all stages. If it has just begun to curdle, try adding hot cream and mix, straight with a spoon.

Exfoliated oil in ganache is a violation of technology, the situation can be saved by heating the entire mass to 40 ° and breaking it with a submersible blender.

Ganache cracking? Poorly soaked biscuit or a very thin layer of cream. And also, perhaps you didn’t stand the cake, then it shrinks and any cream can crack.

Ganache did not freeze, but remained liquid. Most likely you came across low-quality products, I'm talking about chocolate and butter. It is extremely important to find really good ingredients. How to save the cream? Add more melted and cooled chocolate.

This amount of cream is enough to level a cake 16 in diameter, 10 cm high.

P.S. The recipe for chocolate smudges can be found on the blog at the link - just click and you will be in the right place)

Enjoy your meal!

Today I will try to figure out why you need to level the cakes before decorating them with icing or mastic ... Of course, I didn’t discover America, BUT I still really want to draw your attention to a very important stage in the manufacture of cakes - cake alignment before we decorate them.

And so let's figure out why you need to align the cakes at all? - in order for the cake to look beautiful with smooth edges and a beautiful relief. To do this, it must be leveled with cream. What creams are used for this type of work, we will now consider in detail ...
DECORATE THE CAKE WITH MASTIC!

It would seem that we are decorating a cake with mastic - in principle, it is not particularly possible to level the cake (maybe someone will think so), because the mastic lies in a thick layer and any flaw will not be particularly visible on it. BUT this opinion is erroneous - it is precisely for the mastic that it is necessary to ideally prepare the cake (level it with cream) because. when you cover it with mastic, then all the flaws and shortcomings will come up, therefore, when finishing with mastic, it is very important to give smooth, beautiful contours to the cake.

Now let's figure out what creams we will level the cake

I want to offer several options for creams that are suitable for this type of work.

Cream for leveling the cake

BUTTER-THICKENED CREAM

- the easiest cream to make, BUT also the fattest.

• 200 grams of room temperature butter (it should be of very good quality and not too melted - this means that the butter holds its shape BUT when you press with your finger, a dent will remain and the finger will sink well into the butter)
• and about 50-70 grams of condensed milk (of course, the quality of condensed milk also plays a role; it is best to take good quality condensed milk)

We begin to beat the butter with a mixer and gradually introduce condensed milk, beat until smooth.

BUTTER AND WHITE CHOCOLATE CREAM

- such a cream is also easy to prepare and after it hardens it will be especially durable and will keep its shape well

• 200 grams of room temperature butter (it should be of very good quality and not too melted - this means that the butter holds its shape, BUT when you press with your finger, a dent will remain and the finger will sink well into the butter)
• and about 50-70 grams of condensed milk (of course, the quality of condensed milk also plays a role; it is best to take good quality condensed milk)
• 50 grams of white chocolate (you can put more - it depends on what kind of cream you need to finish the cake), you can also take dark chocolate, then the cream will not be light and will have a more chocolate taste.

Cream preparation technology

1. Melt the white chocolate separately. Before mixing it with butter-condensed cream, chocolate must be cooled so that it is not hot (about 28-30 degrees)

2. We begin to beat the butter with a mixer and gradually introduce condensed milk, beat until smooth.

3. Add chocolate to the condensed butter cream, mix until smooth

IMPORTANT - if your cream turned out to be watery - you can put it in the refrigerator for 7-10 minutes and cool it a little, then it will be thicker and it will be more convenient to work with it, if necessary, then for a longer time.

BISCUIT BUTTER-CONDENSED CREAM

• biscuit (I usually use cake biscuit scraps) - grind well with a blender or a combine with a knife attachment
• butter
• condensed milk

Proportions? I do everything by eye...

I will write approximately - most of the biscuit, 100 grams of butter and 50 grams of condensed milk

Cooking technology

1. Grind the biscuit with a blender into crumbs

2. Beat butter with condensed milk separately.

3. Mix the biscuit and butter-condensed cream.

What is good about this type of cream? Due to the biscuit, the cream is not so greasy, and less expensive. This cream is very convenient to level the cake if it does not turn out to be very even.

When the cream hardens well on the cake, for a smoother surface, I still recommend leveling with a thin layer of butter-condensed cream (or butter-condensed cream with chocolate).

SWISS CREAM WITH OIL

It is more difficult to prepare such a cream, BUT it turns out to be less greasy, holds its shape perfectly and is also suitable for leveling cakes.

I want to explain to you why the cream is called Swiss - it is called so because proteins are cooked exactly in Swiss ... What does this mean?

Exists three types of meringue

1. French meringue

- these are proteins whipped with sugar (or with powdered sugar) to the peak you need

2. Italian meringue

- the proteins are whipped separately (until soft peaks), the syrup is boiled separately to 118 degrees, then at a low speed of the mixer, the syrup is gradually introduced into the whipping proteins and continue to beat the proteins until soft peaks. Such a meringue will not make hard peaks

3. Swiss meringue

- proteins together with sugar are heated in a water bath to 70-80 degrees (when the sugar has dissolved, we can assume that the proteins are ready), then beat at high speed with a mixer until the state you need (soft or hard peaks)

IMPORTANT - boiling water should not come into contact with a bowl of proteins with sugar, in the process of heating the proteins with sugar, it is necessary to stir the proteins with a whisk all the time so that they do not curl

What is its complexity?

In order for the squirrels to whip well, the dishes must be perfectly clean and dry (I recommend that before making the cream, all the dishes, beaters and bowls should be treated with boiling water and wiped dry with a clean towel).

• 3 proteins (if you take a medium egg to separate the protein, then the weight of 1 protein will be 30 grams)
• 180 grams of sugar (you can take 150 grams of sugar if you want the cream to be less greasy)
• 200 g butter at room temperature

Cooking technology

1. Warm the proteins together with sugar in a water bath until the sugar dissolves.

2. Beat the whites with sugar until hard peaks (for about 10 minutes, beat with a mixer at high speed) (the whipped whites should not be hot when you add butter)

3. Gradually add butter into the whipping proteins in small pieces, beat until smooth. If the cream has curdled - don't worry, just put the cream in the refrigerator so that it cools a little - usually the cream exfoliates for two reasons

a) when the proteins are still hot, and we are already introducing the oil and it melts very quickly and the cream decreases in volume and exfoliates)

b) when the butter has melted too much and the cream may also separate.

When the cream has cooled a little (it has stood in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes), you can safely continue to beat it at high speed with a mixer until a homogeneous airy state

You can also add various berry purees to such a cream (then your delicate and airy cream will have a berry taste), or, for example, boil soft caramel and add it to the cream - then there will be a caramel taste. In general, the cream is universal; it can be used both for finishing work and for layering cakes. After cooling, it becomes very hard and holds its shape well.

IMPORTANT In any case, no matter what cream you use to decorate the cake, after the cream is applied to the cake, it is necessary to cool the cake well before covering it with mastic.

GANASH FOR MASTIC

ganache It's chocolate mixed with cream. It is also easy to cook and it also holds its shape very well.

• 100 grams of chocolate (we take any chocolate - see which cream you need light or dark)
• 100 grams of cream 30-33% fat

Break the chocolate into pieces, put in a bowl, heat the cream separately until bubbles appear, pour into the chocolate. We wait a couple of minutes and then gradually mix with a spoon until smooth. Cool the cream and apply on the cake.