I continue to study the issue of decorating gingerbread houses.
This part makes me nervous because I've never decorated anything with egg white icing vignettes. But everything in life happens for the first time. And learning new things is always interesting. :))
Let's try to consider several possible decoration options.
I think the ideas will be useful not only for gingerbread houses, but also for cakes, cookies, and desserts.

First, about the white glaze.
There are several different recipes. Icing is also sold in specialized stores, but let’s try to make it ourselves. ;)

Royal Icing

Ingredients :

1 fresh egg white, carefully separated from the yolk;
- about 250 g of powdered sugar until the desired thickness is obtained; Be sure to sift the powder first to loosen it;
- about 0.5 tsp. lemon juice or dry citric acid on the tip of a knife, maybe a little more if you want the icing to taste more sour; add lemon juice towards the end of cooking, otherwise the finished products will turn out too fragile;
- for greater plasticity, you can add 1 teaspoon of a strong (saturated) glucose solution to the mass.

NOTE. If powdered sugar is not available, it can be obtained by sifting granulated sugar through a fine sieve, because Granulated sugar always contains some fine powdered sugar.

		Carefully separate the egg white from the yolk. Even traces of yolk are unacceptable.
		Beat the whites with a fork until a light foam forms. The goal of this procedure is not to beat the protein, but only to sufficiently destroy its structure until it liquefies. There is no need for air bubbles in the finished icing mixture.
		Then we begin to gradually add powdered sugar to the protein in portions, each time thoroughly rubbing until smooth.
		In the middle of cooking, add dry citric acid or almost at the very end - lemon juice. Toward the end of cooking, you can add the desired food coloring.
		Adding powdered sugar in portions, grind and knead until a homogeneous, stable, viscous plastic mass of the desired consistency is formed. Our icing is ready for making jewelry by jigging from cornet. NOTE. For jigging with a cornet, the mass is made more liquid, and for sculpting with your hands, it is thicker, easily kneaded with your fingers. When sculpting by hand, the icing can be dusted with powdered sugar.

Royal Icing is a protein-based drawing paste; it is not used as a cream, but only for making voluminous jewelry. Templates are made, patterns are drawn, the resulting lace is sweet and edible, then dried and stored in candy boxes or plastic ones in a dry place. Icing is afraid of moisture and cannot be stored in the refrigerator. It also doesn’t go well with sour cream or butter cream. Such decorations can only be planted on protein cream.

Recipe

1 egg white
250 g of powdered sugar. Be sure to sift the powder. Sometimes more powder is needed, depending on the size of the protein
lemon juice about 0.5 tsp. or dry lemon - on the tip of a knife, you can add more if you want it more sour.
Add the juice not at the beginning of whipping, but almost at the end, then the products are less fragile.
To make icing, take one white (separate the white from the yolk very carefully) and beat it with a fork until a light foam forms. Then gradually add powdered sugar, continuing to mix. Stir until a stable mass is formed. Ready.
To make jewelry, you need to make a drawing of the desired product or take a template. It is very convenient to use children's coloring books. You need to put a piece of polyethylene on this drawing or put the drawing in a transparent folder so that the drawing is clearly visible. Now, from thick polyethylene or paper, roll a bag into a cone with a small hole at the base. You can just take a small bag. We fill it with icing and start drawing, that is, on the polyethylene that lies in the drawing, we squeeze out the icing, clearly following the lines of the drawing. After you have completed the drawing, leave the icing on the polyethylene to dry. Since products made from icing are very fragile, you need to make more of them. If you need to give the product any shape, then make some kind of device that will correspond to the required shape. For example, butterflies are dried on a slightly open book, then they will not be flat, but with raised wings.
When working with icing, you need to prepare a slightly damp cloth in order to cover the nozzle, which is left idle for a while, since then the nozzle becomes clogged with dried icing.
I don’t really recommend attachment number 1, −2 is better.
No need to beat the whites. Just mix it with a fork or whisk, but not with a mixer.
Beat the whites a little at first, then gradually add powdered sugar and beat until it becomes thick...
Dry on waxed or parchment paper or cellophane, it is convenient to work with transparent thin folders for documents, insert a template into them and apply icing, after drying it is very convenient to remove.
It’s better to shoot at the edge of the table, start from the corner, hold the corner and pull down from the edge of the table, as if through the edge of the table...
Icing dries differently... depending on the size of the part (flower) and your humidity. 2 days is enough for an ordinary flower. It’s good to turn them over to the other side, it will be faster. Large parts take 5-6 days to dry... You can put them in the oven, but not more than 40°C

Recipe with dry protein.

Beat dry egg whites for 6-7 minutes, raw egg whites for 3-4 minutes is enough...
Dry protein is replaced with regular raw protein, and cream of tartar is replaced with citric acid.

Protein powder can be bought in specialized stores that sell everything for baking.

It's better to use dry protein so you don't have to throw away the yolks. And the whites are always different, so you still need to visually see how thick they are and add powder if necessary.

You can paint with gel paints, you can use liquid ones, sometimes liquid paints make the icing more liquid, then you need to add a little powder.

Advice from other craftswomen
Here's what a fairly well-known needlewoman from St. Petersburg, Zhanna Zubova, writes:
“Beat 1 egg white with 200-250g. powdered sugar (you can add 1-2 drops of lemon juice).
The glaze can be tinted with food coloring, but keep in mind that then you will have to add more powder.
Little tricks: Firstly, you need to beat for about 10 minutes to make the mass fluffy and thick. Secondly, in order for the figures to be easily separated from the tracing paper, it must be lubricated with vegetable oil. Thirdly, the glaze is not used immediately; it is covered with a damp cloth for a while. We fill the cornet with the finished mass, cut off the tip to obtain a line of the required width. I paint directly onto the cake (any coating other than wet will work). On cream, jelly or jam, the glaze will melt. Almost all the figures on my cakes are covered and decorated with this glaze. It’s also good for connecting small decorative details.”
More from Nessie:
Basic recipe
3 squirrels
450 - 675g powdered sugar
3 tsp. lemon juice
1−1.5 tsp. glycerin is added to soften the glaze
Place the egg whites in a fat-free bowl and beat with a wooden spoon (an electric mixer can only be used at the initial stage of beating, as the mixer creates a very airy mass, and in this case this should be avoided). Add lemon juice, glycerin and half the powdered sugar. Beat until white. Gradually add the remaining powder and beat until soft, stable peaks form. Cover the bowl tightly with cling film and leave to rest for an hour or more to remove any air bubbles that have formed during beating.
1. To cover the cake, frills, tails and flat, completely filled shapes, add 4 tablespoons of water to the base recipe. The glaze should completely cover the back of the spoon and not run off. (remember how to make jam)
2. For lines, lettering, curls and lacework, add 3 tablespoons of water to the base recipe. To check the correct consistency, touch the back of a spoon to the surface of the frosting and lift the spoon. There should be a small peak.
3. For rosettes, leaves, frills, baskets and borders, add 3 tablespoons of water to the base recipe and more powdered sugar, i.e. take not 450, but 650g. There should be sharp, thin peaks on the surface.
4. For flowers, snow, add 2 tablespoons of water to the base recipe. Proteins should have hard, stable peaks.
If you want to make your lace more rigid and stable, you can use other recipes. Unfortunately, not everyone can purchase these components. But you can ask in supermarkets.
1. ORIENTAL STRINGWORK ICING
1 protein
225−280g powdered sugar
0.5ml (1\8 teaspoon) gum arabic or gum acacia
1 ml (1/4 teaspoon) liquid glucose (buy at a pharmacy)
ROYAL ICING FOR EXTENSION WORK
1 large egg white without connecting thread
175−190g powdered sugar
a pinch of tartaric acid (cream of tartar)
The mass, I’ll tell you... it’s thick, which is why it was difficult to shape it in the right direction (to put it mildly)... What I did was just put it in a micro on the defrost mode for 15 seconds - and... lo and behold - the slightly lukewarm mass went “as if” butter"...

Video tutorial on Royal icing.

And here is the actual decoration process.
How simple! Using a toothpick and a simple food bag.

All! I'm not afraid!
I will succeed! :))

Here are some more cute New Year's ideas.

Christmas trees made from icing

We plant these pieces of different diameters from the cornet. We dry them for about a day.

Today it is very difficult to find a person who does not like sweet desserts, such as cakes. There are a large number of such recipes in cooking; they can be decorated with various patterns, inscriptions or icing. Probably not everyone knows what it is. Let's try to figure this out. So, translated from English, this term means “ice pattern.” And this is not surprising, since products made from it are similar to ice (in color and consistency). Icing, the recipe for which we will definitely learn today, makes it possible to create extraordinary decorations not only for desserts, but also for various dishes. Properly made, it has a matte finish and enormous strength. So, let's try to understand this issue in more detail.

What is "icing"?

Icing is a plastic thick mass of sugar and proteins used to create confectionery decorations that have volume. Usually this mass is white, but with the help of food coloring it can be given any shade. Icing, the recipe for which will be given below, is made by rubbing powdered sugar with fresh egg white. Lemon juice or acid, glucose syrup, glycerin, etc. are added to this mixture.

Working with icing

To work with flexible mass, pre-prepared templates are required, for example, drawings on paper or ready-made contours. Place cling film on such a drawing or place it in a file. In this case, it is not recommended to use parchment or tracing paper, since the icing sticks very strongly to them and then does not come off. So, the film is lubricated with a layer of olive oil (this is important!). Fresh protein mass is placed in a pastry envelope or syringe. At the same time, it should not be liquid so that it does not spread along the contours of the picture. A thick mixture, on the contrary, will be difficult to squeeze out of the envelope. However, in this case, you can sculpt from it in the same way as plasticine.

All elements of the drawing should not be thick. If you want to get multi-colored icing, the recipe for which is very simple, add food coloring to the mixture. You can also apply the mixture to the finished cooled confectionery product, for example, cookies or gingerbread, chocolate glaze. Do not apply it to biscuits or other non-dry surfaces. Only finished icing decorations are placed on them before serving. So, the film with a pattern is dried for about three days. Then the jewelry is carefully removed.

Openwork icing decorations

In this case, a mass of protein and sugar, that is, icing, the recipe for which is attached, is placed on small balloons; they must first be inflated and lubricated with oil. After the pattern has dried, the ball is simply deflated and removed from the product. This must be done carefully, as the resulting products are very fragile. It is recommended to make them with a small margin. A broken part can be glued using egg white mixed with powdered sugar. Store such jewelry at room temperature in a box. Let's take a closer look at the homemade icing recipe.

Icing heart

Ingredients: twenty grams of egg white, one hundred and fifty grams of powdered sugar, fifteen drops of lemon juice, red food coloring, vegetable oil, file and heart template.

Preparing icing

The whites are gently mixed, but not beaten. Add powder gradually, without ceasing to stir, add lemon juice with red food coloring dissolved in it. Mix everything thoroughly until the color becomes uniform. The mass is transferred to a pastry envelope or bag with a nozzle and left for a while, covering the hole with a wet napkin so that it does not dry out.

Preparing the template

After we have looked at the recipe for icing for decorating cakes, we need to make a template. To do this, cut out a heart of the required size from cardboard. Using plasticine, they give it shape and volume. To do this, plasticine is placed on top of cardboard. Next, the template is placed in a file and pressed tightly so that all the air comes out. Under the cardboard, the file is assembled into a knot so that it lies flat and tight on the plasticine. The file is lubricated with vegetable oil.

Pattern Formation

Then a thick line is drawn along the contour, and then any pattern is made at your discretion. These can be intertwined lines, squares, ovals, etc. The finished icing is left to dry for one night. Then they begin to carefully remove it so as not to break or crush it. Having made two such hearts, they are glued together, the same icing is used for this, and the decorations are set back to dry.

Icing lace in fifteen minutes

Ingredients: one protein, two hundred grams of powdered sugar, half a spoon of citric acid. Equipment: olive oil, scraper, silicone mat with patterns, sponge.

Preparation

The icing recipe for lace is no different from the one we discussed above. To do this, the egg white is mixed (but not beaten) with sugar and citric acid. Stir until a thick mass is obtained.

Making lace

The egg mass is distributed over the entire surface of the mat, removing excess. Then everything is placed in a preheated oven and baked for three or five minutes, depending on the type of oven. After time, the finished lace is carefully removed and patterns are made from it as desired. You can decorate the cake with it by attaching it to the sides. You can make all sorts of figures - it all depends on the imagination of the cook.

As you can see, this cake icing recipe is very fast. The lace is ready in fifteen minutes, so you can save time for preparing other holiday dishes.

Beautiful figures from icing

Ingredients: one egg, two hundred grams of powdered sugar, one teaspoon of citric acid.

Making icing (recipe): master class

Beat the egg whites with a fork until a light foam appears. Then add powdered sugar in portions, rubbing the mixture until smooth, and then add citric acid, continuing to stir. You should get a homogeneous, stable protein mass with a thick consistency. Add food coloring if desired. The icing is ready! As it turned out, everything is quite simple. It must be transferred to a pastry bag.

Jewelry making

Balls of the required size are inflated and lubricated with vegetable oil using a brush; olive oil is best in this case. They begin to apply the ornament on top. Once the patterns are applied, the ball is hung to dry. It should hang like this for about a day.

After time has passed, the ball is pierced with a needle and removed from the sugar figure. These sweet balls, which are prepared, can be used to decorate cakes or Christmas compositions.

Lastly...

Thus, it is not difficult to make flexible icing, the recipe for which we already know. Using sugar mass you can create not only lace and balls, but also candlesticks, butterflies, snowflakes and more. This requires only stencils, which can easily be found in children's coloring books. Working with stencils is quite simple, you just need to apply ready-made icing on them and then dry it. Large parts can be glued together using the same icing.

Royal icing is the most popular decoration for various confectionery products. With its help, real masterpieces are created. Patterns that seem to be woven from thin lace look delicious on cakes, gingerbread cookies, pastries and cookies. Decorating confectionery products with icing is an interesting activity. This requires only a pastry bag, blanks with drawings, a plastic bag, olive oil, egg mass, as well as the desire and imagination of the cook. Undoubtedly, every cook will be able to create his own masterpiece that everyone will like.

Icing (“Royal Icing”) is a sugar-protein drawing mass that is used to make voluminous decorations for confectionery products. This mass can be white or colored when food coloring is added to it.

Icing is a fairly thick plastic mass obtained by grinding fresh egg whites with sifted powdered sugar with the addition of some acidifier for plasticity - lemon juice, dry citric acid, cream tartare, etc.

Icing is a protein drawing mass.

Sometimes, for greater plasticity, glucose syrup or a little glycerin is added to the mass, but the addition of glycerin can make the mass too sticky, which will complicate its subsequent detachment from the polyethylene backing. When depositing the mass directly onto the surface of the gingerbread to be decorated, i.e. when subsequent detachment of the icing lace is not expected, the addition of glycerin can significantly facilitate the work.

The correct consistency of icing for jigging it with a cornet.

To create icing decorations, there are drawing masses with a different composition - for example, based on albumin (1 kg of albumin replaces 316 chicken egg whites) and some others, which are more convenient not at home, but in industrial conditions.

NOTE FOR THE CURIOUS. Cremortartar is a tartaric salt of potassium acid C4H5O6K (the name comes from the Latin cremor - thick juice and the Latin tartarum - cream of tartar).
It is formed naturally from long-term storage of wine on the walls of barrels in the form of hard crystalline crusts, which are deposited as a result of fermentation of grape juice; obtained in mass quantities by chemical synthesis.
When combined with water, milk or vegetable juices, i.e. with any liquid mixed into the dough, cremortartar turns into a solution of tartaric acid and thereby promotes the germination of the dough. Therefore, cream tartare is an important component of baking powder (bakpulver), and can also be used independently, regardless of other rising agents (yeast or soda), in those types of dough where it is necessary to achieve particularly strong germination, for example, in puff pastry. Cremortartar can be replaced with other types of food acids: citric, malic, acetic.

Procedure for working with icing:

1) Draw future patterns on paper or print ready-made templates. It is very convenient to use children's coloring books as templates.

2) Place a drawn paper template under plastic wrap or place it in a plastic “file” (a thin transparent bag for documents). Here we use the property of polyethylene that it does not stick to anything. Products may stick “tightly” to tracing paper, parchment or wax paper, especially if the icing mass is too liquid.

For better subsequent unsticking of icing products, a thin layer of olive oil is applied to the plastic film (it is non-drying, i.e. non-polymerizing). Sunflower oil is extremely undesirable (!), because... upon contact with air, it polymerizes by combining with oxygen and hardens (like oil paint), therefore it can additionally glue the product, especially during prolonged drying of large parts.

HELPFUL NOTE: It is the property of the applied layer of sunflower oil to polymerize by combining with atmospheric oxygen and harden into an impenetrable insoluble film that is used when impregnating new wooden kitchen boards with sunflower oil, which makes the impregnated boards non-hygroscopic, easy to clean and almost eternal. To impregnate with oil, new boards are allowed to dry additionally in a dry room, then they are generously lubricated on all sides with sunflower oil, which can be heated, the oil is allowed to soak in for 1 hour, then they are generously lubricated again and left for 3-4 days for final drying.

3) Freshly prepared protein rice mass (icing) is placed in a cornet with a suitable attachment or in a plastic bag with a cut corner (for example, in a document file). The mass should be prepared each time in the quantity needed for the work now. Storing the mass can cause undesirable changes in its plasticity, which will have to be corrected by adding either powdered sugar or a few drops of water and thoroughly rubbing again.

The icing mass should not be too liquid - so that it does not spread out and lose its shape during jigging, and not too thick - so that it is squeezed out of the root without unnecessary effort and does not tear during jigging.

If you prepare a thicker icing mixture, you can use it to sculpt jewelry with your hands, like using plasticine. You should not sculpt too thick decorations, because... they will take too long to dry.

4) Squeeze out the icing onto the plastic film according to the pattern placed underneath it. If you have sufficient artistic skills, you can do without templates, freely drawing in bulk according to your imagination.

When drawing, you can successively use icings colored with food dyes in different colors, which will allow you to get multi-colored decorations.

Icing can be deposited directly on the surface of a finished (baked and cooled) sufficiently dry dough confectionery product (gingerbread, including glazed, shortbread), as well as on chocolate and other things that can be stored outside the refrigerator.

In no case should icing be applied to pastry cream, biscuits or other wet surfaces, as well as to products that require storage only in the refrigerator. Icing decorations are placed on such products immediately before serving.

5) The film with a deposited pattern (or a decorated confectionery product) is left to dry at room temperature (but not higher than +40 degrees C) for 1-2-3 days until the mass is completely dry.

Icing dries differently depending on the size of the part and the humidity in the room. 1-2 days of drying is enough for an ordinary small flower. Large parts can take up to 5-6 days to dry. To speed up drying, products can be placed in a warm, dry place with a temperature no higher than +40°C.

If you want to get a three-dimensional decoration, a film with a deposited pattern is placed for drying on some curved surface - for example, on the side surface of a cylindrical pan, in the spread of an open book, etc.

Properly prepared icing mixture (not too liquid) does not flow down on inclined surfaces. If the deposited mass is a little liquid, you should first let it dry a little until the desired thickening (but not brittle) in a horizontal position and only then place it on a curved surface.

To obtain openwork spherical products, the protein mass is applied to small inflated balloons greased with vegetable oil. After the icing has dried, the balloons are pierced and the deflated shells are carefully removed from the resulting decorations.

6) The dried icing decorations are carefully removed from the backing.

It is better to remove products from the backing at the edge of the table, starting from the corner of the backing, which you carefully pull down, bending the backing over the edge of the edge of the table.

Since products made from icing are very fragile, they must be prepared with some reserve in quantity.

Icing decorations can be glued together with egg white mixed with powdered sugar and then allowed to dry.

To make large volumetric icing decorations, individual parts are made according to drawings, which, after complete drying, are glued into a single product (for example, into an Eiffel Tower - see below).

Broken products are tasty on their own and can be successfully served with tea. It often happens that icing decorations are eaten by family members, especially children, much before they dry out. So a solid supply of ready-made icing decorations never hurts.

The resulting sweet edible lace is used to decorate various confectionery products. Decorations made from icing can be stored for a long time in boxes at room temperature, provided there is no high humidity.

Decorations made from icing cannot be stored in the refrigerator, because... After exposure to the cold, they liquefy. Therefore, pre-prepared icing decorations are placed on cakes only immediately before serving.

Preparing icing
Royal Icing

Ingredients :
- 1 fresh egg white, carefully separated from the yolk;
- about 250 g of powdered sugar until the desired thickness is obtained; Be sure to sift the powder first to loosen it;
- about 0.5 tsp. lemon juice or dry citric acid on the tip of a knife, maybe a little more if you want the icing to taste more sour; add lemon juice towards the end of cooking, otherwise the finished products will turn out too fragile;
- for greater plasticity, you can add 1 teaspoon of a strong (saturated) glucose solution to the mass.
NOTE. If powdered sugar is not available, it can be obtained by sifting granulated sugar through a fine sieve, because Granulated sugar always contains some fine powdered sugar.

		Carefully separate the egg white from the yolk. Even traces of yolk are unacceptable.
		Beat the whites with a fork until a light foam forms. The goal of this procedure is not to beat the protein, but only to sufficiently destroy its structure until it liquefies. There is no need for air bubbles in the finished icing mixture.
		Then we begin to gradually add powdered sugar to the protein in portions, each time thoroughly rubbing until smooth.
		In the middle of cooking, add dry citric acid or almost at the very end - lemon juice. Toward the end of cooking, you can add the desired food coloring.
		Adding powdered sugar in portions, grind and knead until a homogeneous, stable, viscous plastic mass of the desired consistency is formed. Our icing is ready for making jewelry by jigging from cornet. NOTE. For jigging with a cornet, the mass is made more liquid, and for sculpting with your hands, it is thicker, easily kneaded with your fingers. When sculpting by hand, the icing can be dusted with powdered sugar.

Icing snowflake

1. Begin depositing the icing from the cornet onto a plastic film lightly greased with olive (not sunflower! - see above) oil over a stencil from a children's coloring book placed underneath.

2. Completion of jigging the icing for the snowflake.

3. Shift the placed stencil and deposit another snowflake.

4. Drying deposited icing products at room temperature for 1-2 days.

5. The finished dried snowflake becomes quite hard.

Drawing a multi-colored product by successively depositing cornetic icing of different colors.
First, the contours were stenciled with white icing, then they were filled with colored icing.

Drying a multi-colored icing product on a flat surface.

Drying multi-colored butterflies from icing on the curved surface of a book spread to obtain three-dimensional products.

Drying deposited products on cylindrical surfaces.

Dried pink icing decorations.
The crown is dried on a film laid on a cylindrical jar lying on its side. Decorating sugar beads are placed on the icing immediately after it is deposited. After drying the crown shortly before serving it, you can deposit “diamonds” from droplets of thickly cooked transparent colorless jelly onto it.

Multi-colored icing decorations waiting to dry.

A voluminous butterfly and white icing patterns on a layered gingerbread with layers of jam, covered with confectionery fondant.

Volumetric butterflies and openwork decorations made of white icing on a cake covered with confectionery fondant.

White icing decorations on a cake covered with chocolate icing.

Decorations made of colored and white icing.
The carriage is glued together from prepared and dried flat parts.

Icing decorations for glazed gingerbread or cake.

Decoration of wine glasses for newlyweds with icing.
Icing is applied in beautiful lace patterns to washed glass glasses.
The glasses are placed on the gift cake and served to the newlyweds, who immediately drink champagne from them.
After using the glasses, the icing is washed off with water.

Products made from icing can be served as an independent dessert.

Small crafts made from colored icing for decorating confectionery products.

Miniature icing decorations turn even sugar cubes into attractive candies.

Christmas trees made from icing

We plant these pieces of different diameters from the cornet. We dry them for about a day.

Then we glue the parts into a Christmas tree using icing. After assembly, we dry the Christmas tree for another day.

The result is a Christmas tree like this for decorating a New Year's composition with a gingerbread house or for a New Year's cake.

Christmas trees made of green icing.

New Year's composition.
A Christmas tree made of green icing, planted from a cornet on a vertically installed conical gingerbread base, glued with thick jam from two half-cones baked from gingerbread dough.
The snowman is molded from thick icing of different colors, dusted with powdered sugar during modeling so that it does not stick to your hands.
The star on the Christmas tree is molded from icing.
Rectangular candies with red bows are chocolate candies covered with multi-colored icing and dried for 24 hours.

Icing balls

		Let's take: - icing, ground to the consistency of peaks, - small balloons, - a little olive oil, - threads for tying balls, - pastry syringe with nozzle number 1 or 2. And we prepare in advance the place where we will hang the balls for drying.
		We inflate the balloons to the desired size and tie them with longer threads, so that we can then hang them to dry.
		Lightly grease each ball with olive oil so that after drying the icing will come off the rubber surface more easily. To do this, use a brush to drip oil onto the inflated balloon, and then rub it over the entire surface with your hands.
		We take the ball by the tied end and start from a pastry bag, using a nozzle (preferably number 1 for greater elegance) we pipe a pattern with icing, while scrolling the ball. Then we hang it to dry for 10-24 hours, and take the next ball to work.
		We carefully take the dried icing ball into the palm of our hand and gently poke it into the holes of the pattern with something blunt (for example, a blunt brush handle) to completely unstick the icing from the walls of the ball. To make the ball easier to separate from the icing, it is advisable not to inflate it too much. Then we puncture the balloon. ATTENTION! If you pierce the inflated balloon immediately, without separating its walls, then there is a very high probability that our icing balloon may break.
		Carefully remove the shell of the burst balloon from the product by the thread.
		Our ball is ready to be used for decoration.

Volumetric icing decorations,
glued together from flat parts.
1. BABY STROLLER

We use a CD as a circle template.

PARTS (see photo below, make spare parts in case of breakdowns):

• 2 sidewalls of the stroller (sectors in 3/4 circles) - we plant the outline, and inside it - a rectangular mesh;
• 1 strip, 3/4 of a circle long (as the length of the sidewall perimeter) and as wide as the width of the future stroller - a part of the stroller body connecting the two sidewalls; after depositing, this part must be bent along a radius equal to the radius of the sidewall and dried in this position; those. dry on a template made from a CD;
• 4 wheels (any design inside the wheels as designed by the home artist);
• 1 rectangle, approximately 4x6 cm (it is attached to the bottom of the stroller, and the wheels will be attached to it);
• 2 beautiful decorative curls on the sides of the stroller;
• 2 handles for the stroller;
• you can also make a “tulle” curtain;
• 1 lace circle with a diameter of about 8 cm as the base of the entire structure - we will install our stroller on it.

The essence of manufacturing parts is clear from the photo. We dry all the parts thoroughly on a flat surface, and after depositing the round part of the body connecting the two sidewalls, we dry it on a round template.

ASSEMBLY OF THE STROLLER:

We glue the bent part of the body with icing or simply powdered sugar ground with protein to one of the sides of the stroller, smearing both glued surfaces with a thin layer, and let it dry.

Then glue the second side panel.

When everything is dry, glue a curl to one side of the stroller, and a small rectangle to the bottom of the stroller on the outside. leave to dry.

Turn the stroller over and glue the curl on the other side. The stroller lies on its side, glue the wheels to the rectangle and to the stroller. We put in everything we can to hold the parts in place until the glue sets. When it dries well (you need to wait 20-30 minutes), we try to place the stroller vertically on the wheels. Glue the wheels to the patterned circle. Let's dry it.

Then we glue the handles of the stroller and install the tyling (if it was made).
That's it! Carefully store in a suitable box until the hour of donation. The main thing is not to break the product ahead of time. The technique of drawing with icing is clear from what is stated above on this page.
When drawing with icing, you can use cornets with multi-colored icing, fingers, various stacks, as well as brushes lightly moistened with water.

Angel.

A miniature that can become an original gift.

Icing moldings

The icing for sculpting by hand is prepared thicker than for jigging from a cornet.
To prevent the icing from sticking to your hands when sculpting, your hands are lubricated with a thin layer of vegetable oil, and the icing is dusted with powdered sugar.

Moldings made of icing of different colors with a butterfly sitting on them.

Icing is a terrible force for decorating confectionery products,
including all sorts of gingerbread houses and gingerbread compositions.

Ingredients:
– 1 fresh egg white, carefully separated from the yolk;
– about 250 g of powdered sugar until the desired thickness is obtained; Be sure to sift the powder first to loosen it;

– about 0.5 tsp. lemon juice or dry citric acid on the tip of a knife, maybe a little more if you want the icing to taste more sour; add lemon juice towards the end of cooking, otherwise the finished products will turn out too fragile;
for greater plasticity, you can add 1 teaspoon of a strong (saturated) glucose solution to the mass.

Icing preparation technology:

Carefully separate the egg white from the yolk.
Even traces of yolk are unacceptable.
Beat the whites with a fork until a light foam forms. The goal of this procedure is not to beat the protein, but only to sufficiently destroy its structure until it liquefies.
There is no need for air bubbles in the finished icing mixture.
Then we begin to gradually add powdered sugar to the protein in portions, each time thoroughly rubbing until smooth.
In the middle of cooking, add dry citric acid or almost at the very end - lemon juice.
Toward the end of cooking, you can add the desired food coloring.
Adding powdered sugar in portions, grind and knead until a homogeneous, stable, viscous plastic mass of the desired consistency is formed.
Our icing is ready for making jewelry!

NOTE. For jigging with a cornet, the mass is made more liquid, and for sculpting with your hands, it is thicker, easily kneaded with your fingers.
When sculpting by hand, the icing can be dusted with powdered sugar.

Place the desired stencil in the file (for example, a lace butterfly).
Lubricate the working surface of the substrate with the stencil with olive oil (sunflower oil is not suitable - see explanation below!)
We apply icing using a stencil.
We move the stencil in the file to another position and draw the next take of the figure.
After filling the entire working surface of the substrate, carefully set it aside to dry the products.
Usually this is room temperature and 1-2 days.
If you want to get not a flat, but a voluminous product (for example, a butterfly wing, a plant petal or a semicircular diadem), then place the substrate with the products to dry on a jar of the required diameter lying on its side, or on the spread of a book. As a result, the product will take the shape you need.
The finished product becomes quite hard, but very fragile!
If you need to add additional details to your jewelry (for example, a second layer and a different color), then apply them and set the items aside to dry again.

MORE:
“Royal Icing” is a sugar-protein mass that is used to make voluminous decorations for a variety of confectionery products. Icing can be pure white, or it can be colored with the addition of food coloring.

Icing is a fairly thick plastic mass obtained by grinding fresh egg whites with sifted powdered sugar with the addition of some acidifier for plasticity - lemon juice, dry citric acid, cream tartare, etc.

Sometimes, for greater plasticity, glucose syrup or a little glycerin is added to the mass, but the addition of glycerin can make the mass too sticky, which will complicate its subsequent detachment from the substrate on which figures for decoration are made. When applying icing directly to the surface of the gingerbread being decorated, i.e. when subsequent detachment of the icing lace is not expected, the addition of glycerin can significantly facilitate the work.

To create icing decorations, there are drawing masses with a different composition - for example, based on albumin (1 kg of albumin replaces 316 chicken egg whites) and some others, which are more convenient not at home, but in industrial conditions.

Procedure for working with icing:

Draw future icing patterns on paper or print ready-made templates in the required scale.
It is also very convenient to use children's coloring books as templates.
Place the paper template under plastic wrap or place it in a plastic “file” (a thin transparent bag for documents).
Here we use the property of polyethylene that it does not stick to anything, unlike tracing paper, parchment or wax paper, to which products can stick “tightly”, especially if the icing mass is too liquid.
For better subsequent unsticking of icing products, a thin layer of olive oil is applied to the plastic film (it does not dry out, i.e. does not polymerize).
Sunflower oil is extremely undesirable, because... upon contact with air, it polymerizes by combining with oxygen and hardens (like oil paint), therefore it can additionally glue the product, especially during prolonged drying of large parts.

DRAWING WITH ICING.
Freshly prepared protein mass (icing) is placed in a cornet with a suitable attachment or in a plastic bag with a cut corner (for example, in a document file).
The mass should always be prepared in the quantity needed right now for work.
Storing the icing mass can cause undesirable changes in its plasticity, which will have to be corrected by adding either powdered sugar or a few drops of water and thoroughly rubbing again, which is very troublesome and time-consuming.
The icing mass should not be too liquid - so that when applied it does not spread and lose its shape, and not too thick - so that it is squeezed out of the cornet without unnecessary effort and does not tear when applied.
If you prepare a thicker icing mixture, you can use it to sculpt jewelry with your hands, like using plasticine. You should not sculpt too thick decorations, because... they will take too long to dry.
Squeeze out the icing onto the plastic film according to the pattern placed underneath it.
If you have sufficient artistic skills, you can do without templates, freely drawing in bulk according to your imagination.
When drawing, you can successively use icing colored with food dyes in different colors, which will allow you to get multi-colored decorations.
Icing can be applied directly to the surface of a finished (baked and cooled) sufficiently dry confectionery product (gingerbread, including glazed, shortbread), as well as to chocolate and other products that can be stored outside the refrigerator.
However, under no circumstances should icing be applied to pastry cream, biscuits or other wet surfaces, as well as to other products that require storage only in the refrigerator.
Icing decorations are placed on such products immediately before serving.
The film with a pattern applied to it (or a decorated confectionery product) is left to dry at room temperature (but not higher than +40 degrees C) for 1-2-3 days until the mass dries completely.
Icing dries differently depending on the size of the part and the humidity in the room.
1-2 days of drying is enough for an ordinary small flower.
Large parts can take up to 5-6 days to dry.
To speed up drying, products can be placed in a warm, dry place with a temperature no higher than +40°C.
If you use ready-made icing, the drying speed increases several times. Volumetric decorations made of icing If you want to get a volumetric decoration, a film with a pattern applied to it is placed for drying on some curved surface - for example, on the side surface of a cylindrical pan, in the spread of an open book, etc.
Properly prepared icing mixture (not too liquid) does not flow down on inclined surfaces.
If the deposited mass is a little liquid, you should first let it dry a little until the desired thickening (but not brittle) in a horizontal position and only then place it on a curved surface.
To obtain openwork spherical products, the protein mass is applied to small inflated balloons greased with vegetable oil.
After the icing has dried, the balloons are pierced and the deflated shells are carefully removed from the resulting decorations.
The dried icing decorations are carefully removed from the backing.
It is better to remove products from the backing at the edge of the table, starting from the corner of the backing, which you carefully pull down, bending the backing over the edge of the edge of the table.
Since products made from icing are very fragile, they must be prepared with some reserve in quantity.

Icing and the Eiffel Tower Icing decorations can be glued together with egg whites shaken with powdered sugar and then allowed to dry.

To produce large volumetric icing decorations, individual parts are made according to drawings, which, after complete drying, are glued into a single product.

Broken products are tasty on their own and can be successfully served with tea.
It often happens that icing decorations are eaten by family members, especially children, much before they dry out.
So a solid supply of ready-made icing decorations never hurts.

The resulting sweet edible lace is used to decorate various confectionery products.
Decorations made from icing can be stored for a long time in boxes at room temperature, provided there is no high humidity.

Decorations made from icing cannot be stored in the refrigerator, because... After exposure to the cold, they liquefy.
Therefore, pre-prepared icing decorations are placed on cakes only immediately before serving.

Icing is applied in beautiful lace patterns to washed glass glasses.
The glasses are placed on the gift cake and served to the newlyweds, who immediately drink champagne from them.
After using the glasses, the icing is washed off with water.

ICING BALLS
Take: icing, ground to the consistency of peaks; small balloons; a little olive oil; threads for tying balls; pastry syringe with nozzle number 1 or 2.
We prepare in advance the place where we will hang the balls for drying.
We inflate the balloons to the desired size and tie them with longer threads, so that we can then hang them to dry.
Lightly grease each ball with olive oil so that after drying the icing will come off the rubber surface more easily. To do this, use a brush to drip oil onto the inflated balloon, and then rub it over the entire surface with your hands.
Lace balls made of icing We take the ball by the tied end and start from a pastry bag, through a nozzle (preferably number 1 for greater grace) we apply a pattern with icing, while scrolling the ball.
Then we hang it to dry for 10-24 hours, and take the next ball to work.
We carefully take the dried icing ball into the palm of our hand and gently poke it into the holes of the pattern with something blunt (for example, a blunt brush handle) to completely unstick the icing from the walls of the ball. To make the ball easier to separate from the icing, it is advisable not to inflate it too much.
Then we puncture the balloon. ATTENTION!
If you pierce the inflated balloon immediately, without separating its walls, then there is a very high probability that our icing balloon may break.
Carefully remove the shell of the burst balloon from the product by the thread.
Our ball is ready to be used for decoration.

When drawing with icing, you can use cornets with multi-colored icing, fingers, various stacks, as well as brushes lightly moistened with water.

Large wedding cakes decorated with icing look especially beautiful! But even small confectionery forms are decorated with icing designs.

You can also paint on white icing with a brush with food coloring, practically turning the confectionery product into a real painting!

The icing for sculpting by hand is prepared thicker than for working with a cornet.
To prevent the icing from sticking to your hands when sculpting, your hands are lubricated with a thin layer of vegetable oil, and the icing is dusted with powdered sugar.

You can sculpt anything from icing!
So-called sugar flowers have recently become especially popular, which can easily be confused with real fresh flowers by the untrained eye!

Icing is a terrible force for decorating absolutely any confectionery product!

December 27, 2014

For a very long time I was looking for a recipe for a safe glaze to cover gingerbread cookies for Christmas, but the presence of raw egg white in the composition always confused me. It is categorically unacceptable in my recipes unless heat treatment is used.

Today I tried the recipe for Royal Icing, which was introduced to us at MK by Maria, the founder of “GINGERBAND&COOKIE”. So this glaze uses dried egg white, which is absolutely safe. You can buy it at any health food store that sells proteins and supplements for athletes. It is sold there in kg, but much cheaper than in confectionery stores for 100 grams.

To apply the glaze, I recommend stocking up on a damp towel and pastry bags up to 25-30 cm, no more. By the way, there is no need to fill them completely. Clips for pastry bags (I got them from Ikea) so that the icing does not leak out and caps for the nozzle (foil will do).

INGREDIENTS:

25 gr. - dry egg white

150 g - water at room temperature

1 kg. powdered sugar

5 ml. lemon juice

PREPARATION:

Mix egg white and water. In the meantime, start grinding the powder. If your powder is ready, I recommend sifting it through a sieve, otherwise there is a high risk of a grain of sugar getting into the hole in the nozzle (this can clog it). When the powder is completely sifted and the protein has dissolved, check that there are no lumps that can be rubbed through the sieve.

Beat the egg whites and water with a mixer until stiff peaks form like meringue (about 5 minutes). Add lemon juice if desired. Add powdered sugar (add a little at a time). If you have a weak mixer, I’m sure you can mix with a spatula by hand, but you need to knead well until smooth. Usually everyone says that the glaze is not whipped, but mixed by hand, so that bubbles do not form when stirring, but we were taught this way at MK, that’s why I write exactly this method. I assure you there were no bubbles. The glaze is perfect after beating. Beat the glaze for another 5 minutes. It will turn out very thick, white and dense. There will be a spoon in it (stiff pics - hard peaks).

In order to dilute the glaze, you need to wet it. You shouldn't do this with the whole amount. Take what you need in a cup; it will be enough for 10-20 gingerbreads over the entire surface. Immediately smooth out the rest of the glaze and cover with plastic. The polyethylene should be in contact with the glaze over the entire surface. This way, the air will prevent it from drying out and crystals will not form, which could clog the nozzles in the future.

So how do you wet the frosting? Just moisten, not dilute with water, but moisten. This method eliminates bubbles on the surface of the glaze. It is with water that these evil bubbles come. Pour a couple of spoons of water into a cup with thick glaze and immediately drain it all, the glaze is already moistened. Stir well, then wet again, pouring a little water (literally a spoon or two) and immediately draining without leaving any residue. And so on until the desired consistency is achieved 3-5 times.

It’s easy to check the desired consistency:

• for the contour soft pics soft peaks, after thinning the glaze is still thick, but the peak no longer stands on the spoon, but bends like a bird’s beak. Let's check, dip a spoon into the glaze, take it out, put it vertically, the peak falls like a bird's beak. If it is too thin with water, add thick glaze (stiff pics) and knead to desired consistency.
• To fill the main design with run sugar liquid glaze, dilute it further as in the previous stage until the glaze begins to fall off the spoon like melted ice cream. Be careful here, don't overdo it. This glaze is easy to check. Drop a little glaze from a spoon onto the plate and divide it into two parts with a toothpick; after exactly 20 seconds, the groove completely disappears and the divided drop is restored. If it recovers much faster, the glaze is probably over-moistened and will leak. Add more thick mixture and bring to the desired consistency, and if, on the contrary, a toothpick mark remains, then add water drop by drop and mix well with a spoon.

MAIN 3 TYPES OF GLAZE CONSISTENCY:

Stiff pics are hard peaks, this is what you and I will get after adding powder. This icing is used to create flowers and glue the gingerbread house together.

Soft pics: soft pics for outline.

- run sugar liquid glaze: for filling the main design.

Draw or print out samples of stripes, a circle, a heart, approximate images of cookies on paper and practice on paper. The hand will understand immediately.

KEY POINTS FOR PREPARING ROYAL ICING:

• Always use finely ground powdered sugar and sift it through a fine sieve to remove any sugar residue. It settles at the bottom of the glaze and will subsequently clog the baits or may prevent the white from rising.
• Cover the finished glaze tightly with cling film or a wet towel, because the glaze dries very quickly. Crystals that form after the glaze dries can also get into the nozzles and interfere with decoration.
• Dry protein based glaze can be stored for up to 1 week at room temperature.
• If you make glaze based on raw proteins (which is generally not safe), then replace 25 grams of dry protein and 150 ml of water with 4 egg whites. The procedure for making raw egg white glaze is the same. But the glaze on raw whites has a much shorter shelf life - only 2-3 days and strictly in the refrigerator.
• The amount of powdered sugar may vary depending on the climate or weather. For example, if the weather is humid, then you need to add more powdered sugar. If the climate or weather is dry, then you can add less powdered sugar (800-900g). Add powdered sugar a little at a time. And remember that the glaze should not appear dry. It should look like ice cream in a tray.
• I don't use raw egg based icing because it's dangerous, only dry egg white based ones. (all experiments are at your own discretion)
• Lemon is added to the glaze to make it more elastic, and in my opinion, also more tasty.
• If you are making frosting using dried egg whites, always read the instructions. You may need to adjust the proportions of egg white powder and water. Diluted protein foams well.

GLAZE AND TIPS:

Nozzle 1mm, 2mm, suitable for contour, I even managed to use 3mm, but this is on a large gingerbread. Check the consistency of the glaze yourself at 1 mm; you may need to thin the glaze a little. In general, I cut off a corner from the bag to the required hole and adjusted it myself, because... I don’t have that many attachments yet.

Apply the glaze to the gingerbread cookies using a falling thread of glaze. This way it can be applied evenly and its direction can be adjusted. If you scratch the gingerbread with a nozzle, then your trembling hands will let you down and a crooked outline is guaranteed. Touch the nozzle to the gingerbread, squeeze out a little icing and lift the nozzle away from the gingerbread. Let the icing flow onto the gingerbread overhang. Practice before applying to the gingerbread.

When applying the fill, use a nozzle with a hole of at least 2 mm, this way it will spread over the surface faster, and by the way, it’s easyadjusting the edge directly with a nozzle, and the rule of falling glaze has no use here. We remember that all errors will merge into a smooth surface. Some people draw the outline with icing first. soft pics are soft and then filled, I don’t recommend doing this, the borders can be very noticeable. It is better to fill the mixture immediately with the desired consistency.

When you use more than one color, be sure to put a foil cap on the tip of the nozzle or hide it in a damp towel so that it does not dry out and ruin your design. You can also wipe it with the same towel to remove the ever-leaking glaze.

GLAZE AND DYES:

You dilute the glaze in small quantities, so it is better to add the dye at the tip of a toothpick, gradually adding it if desired. Delicate colors can be achieved if you add them at the very tip of the toothpick. I use American Color gel dyes.