Fruit cake decoration. DIY cake decoration at home (photo)

Cakes decorated with fruits look elegant and very appetizing. In addition, such baked goods are usually very light and tasty. You can decorate the cake with almost any fruit. But thinking that you just need to put fruit on the cake to make a delicious dish is completely wrong. In order for the picture to turn out whole, it is necessary to very carefully select fruits - both in color, and in size, and in taste.

Fruits are used to decorate not only store-bought cakes, but also homemade ones. True, in order for the cake to maintain its beautiful appearance, the fruit must be laid out according to certain rules. Otherwise, the baked goods may simply get wet and spread.

How to decorate a cake with fruits

First you need to prepare the cakes. Any biscuits are suitable as a base. After all, the main part of the cake consists of fruit, protein cream or jelly layers. Prepare the cake, brush the layers with cream. Also coat the cake with cream on top, but only with a very thin layer. Any fruit is suitable for decorating the cake - citrus fruits, apples, pears, bananas, kiwi, grapes, etc. Berries are also especially popular - currants, blackberries, strawberries, cherries and gooseberries. Some of them can be used whole, others can be cut into slices, circles, squares and other shapes. To consolidate the result, it is best to pour jelly over the fruit. This is necessary so that the fruit does not lose its appearance: it does not become weathered or dry out.

Alternatively, the fruit can be boiled in sugar syrup before placing on the cake. These do not require further filling with jelly.

Make a beautiful figure out of fruit. It could be a heart, a bow, a fish or some other picture. You can also lay out the fruits in a chaotic manner - in a circle or in stripes.

You can further decorate the fruits that you will use to decorate the cake by dipping them in powdered sugar or melted chocolate.

If you are going to dip fruits or berries in powder, remember that they must be dry. Otherwise, the powder will simply be absorbed. It will get wet and lose all its attractiveness.

How to make fruit decorations for a cake

Fruit roses are very popular. One of the variants of such a decorative flower is made from apples and peaches. To prepare the flower you will need: - 1 glass of sugar; - 1 glass of water; - 1 apple; - 1 peach; - lemon zest.

Peel the inside of the apples and peaches - remove the seeds and cores. Cut the fruit into thin slices. Cut the zest from the lemon. Now you can move on to making the syrup. To do this, mix sugar and water and bring them to a boil. Place the fruit in the syrup and cook until it becomes translucent. Remove the fruit and place on a plate to drain the syrup. Then roll each plate, wrapping one inside the other. One rose takes about 6 slices.

It is difficult to imagine a person who has not tried sweets at least once in his life. Of course, this is not the main food; you can do without it. But sweets have a different purpose: dessert can improve your mood and can give pleasure only from its very consumption.

World of sweets

Eating sweets has long been considered a special tradition, the end of a main meal or an independent snack, the beauty of which lies in savoring, leisurely eating and enjoying the taste of dessert.

The world of sweets is big. These are various types of sweets, marshmallows, marshmallows, jellies, cakes and pastries, sorbets and halva. Sweets always accompany us. There are traditional ones, characteristic of a particular nation, and there are treats that were prepared for some holiday. There are such goodies that you can eat for dessert every day. Among such sweets are glazed fruits. They can be used as an independent dish or in cakes and sweet pies.

This incredibly tasty delicacy is loved by both adults and children. It is prepared from well-ripened, but not overripe fruits. The recipe is simple, and the dessert turns out healthy, as it retains many vitamins.

Large fruits must be cored and peeled and placed in a porcelain bowl with a lid. Separately, prepare the syrup: pour 500 grams of sugar into 0.5 liters of water, heat until completely dissolved. Then pour the hot syrup prepared in this way over the fruit, cover with a lid and leave for a day. Then strain the fruit through a sieve. Boil the syrup again until thick and pour it over the fruit again. Again we leave it for a day.

We repeat this procedure until the syrup has completely evaporated. Typically, this takes 8-10 days and the glazed fruit is ready. Dry them well and put them in glass jars.

A little trick: to give the fruit an attractive appearance, you can add gelatin to the syrup (two grams per hundred grams of fruit).

Recipes

Glazed fruits for the cake can be prepared according to the following recipe. To implement it we will need: apples, pears, quinces (two pieces each), plums, apricots, peaches (four pieces each), water (one liter), powdered sugar (one kilogram).

Make syrup from water and powder. We peel the fruits, cut large ones into slices, and pierce them with a needle so that they are better soaked. Pour in hot syrup and leave for a day. Then drain, boil until thick and pour in the fruit again. Leave for 5-7 days until the syrup has completely evaporated. We put the fruits on paper, dry them well and put them in a cardboard box.

Such glazed fruits are stored for a very long time. They will be a wonderful decoration for a cake.

You can pleasantly surprise your guests with a delicious dish that can be given beauty by glazed fruits (the recipe with photo was given above).

Making such a cake is not difficult. First, prepare shortbread dough according to any recipe. Place the biscuit on the bottom of the mold. Then we’ll make the filling: beat butter with powdered sugar, add eggs, almonds, flour, chocolate, vanilla. Place on the crust and place in the oven. The baked crust with filling remains to be decorated with glazed fruits, which can be prepared according to one of the recipes mentioned above.

Bon appetit!

What's the most fun part about making a birthday cake? Of course, decoration. doing it yourself at home is a very interesting and exciting activity. However, it must be said that in addition to an original or complex design, a sweet dessert should also be tasty. doing it yourself at home is not at all as frivolous as some beginners might think.

Basic design rules

If you have gotten the hang of baking puffed biscuits, shortbread or puff pastries and you like this business, then sooner or later you will definitely have the desire to not just sprinkle the sides and top with crumbs from the cakes, although this looks very cute and homey, but also to make volumetric compositions from mastic, draw patterns and write inscriptions.

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home can be done using fresh or canned fruits, jellies, various creams, mastic, fondant, whipped cream, etc. There are several rules that are very desirable to follow. For example, it is believed that the decoration of a cake should consist of at least 70% of the products from which the base of the dessert is made. DIY cake decoration at home for children should not contain alcoholic ingredients. And if the little hero of the occasion asked for a cake with a decoration in the form of a car, and you cannot cut it out of a biscuit, mold it out of mastic or draw it, then come up with something simpler, but with a similar theme.

If the child doesn’t like it, then don’t fill the entire perimeter with voluminous roses, even though you personally like them and they turn out especially well for you.

These rules are quite conditional. Obviously, decorating a cake with your own hands at home for a child is always a manifestation of love for your baby, no matter how old he is, as well as a desire to please his dear child with a delicious and intricately decorated delicacy. Therefore, we will not waste your time with detached descriptions of the rules of etiquette, but will tell and show how to make various jewelry and mixtures for sculpting them.

Properly decorating a cake with your own hands at home requires compliance with one mandatory condition - the cake layers should not be visible. They must be carefully disguised with cream or mastic.

Whipped cream

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home with cream is the easiest and fastest way to decorate. In addition, whipped cream goes perfectly with all types of dough, soaking, filling and creams. Using different attachments you can experiment with patterns. If you don’t have a special pastry bag, you can coat the cake with a thick layer of cream and apply designs with cutlery, as shown in the photo.

For voluminous decorations, they are made from heavy cream, at least 33%, and powdered sugar. First, the cream is whipped to soft peaks, then the powder is gradually introduced and whipped to hard peaks. The finished mixture is transferred to a pastry bag and squeezed out in accordance with the intended design.

Butter cream

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home with butter cream is done in the same way as with whipped cream, that is, using the same tools and the same methods. But there are still more options for buttercream. Compared to whipped cream, it is more stable.

To prepare it you need very good 100% butter - 522 g, the finest powdered sugar - 280 g, high-quality condensed milk without vegetable fats and preservatives - 209 g, vanillin powder - 5 g, cognac - 2 g, boiled semolina porridge - 65 g.

Beat the softened butter at the lowest speed. Five minutes after the start of whipping, add powder in a thin stream. Gradually increase the speed. Place semolina porridge, condensed milk, cognac and vanillin into the cream. Beat on high speed for 10 minutes. When stored in the refrigerator, this cream does not deteriorate within three days. It is very good to make flowers from it, draw directly on the cake using different nozzles on a pastry bag, and write congratulations.

Dry food coloring, cocoa powder, cuttlefish ink, etc. are used to color the cream.

Melted chocolate decoration

Figures made from melted chocolate look very good on soft creamy coating. To make them you need a pastry bag with a small hole, a chocolate bar and foil. The chocolate is melted in a water bath and poured into the bag. Squeeze a thin stream onto the foil. The design must be applied to the foil in advance. These could be structural elements for a house, a car, an ornate border, intricate curls, flowers, etc. Wait until the chocolate hardens again. Carefully separate the hardened figures from the foil and stick them into the cream.

Decorating confectionery products with sweet mastic

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home using mastic is not at all difficult, much easier than fiddling with buttercream. However, the dessert covered with mastic gives the impression of being the work of a professional pastry chef. There are many ways to prepare mastic. We will tell you about several. If you are going to decorate the cake with a wrap or then pay attention to the following:

The mastic can be prepared long before baking the cakes; it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to several months, provided that it is tightly wrapped in several layers of polyethylene;

Powdered sugar should be the finest grind; before work it must be sifted; if during rolling there is a small solid fragment in the mastic, it will tear the entire mastic fabric;

When connecting individual parts, for example flower petals, the mastic should be lightly moistened with water at the joints;

A mastic sheet is applied to a cake covered with frozen ganache or marzipan; if you cover a damp sponge cake soaked in syrup or sour cream with mastic, it will dissolve;

Powdered sugar is the basis of mastic, its quantity in recipes is arbitrary; much depends on the humidity and temperature of the environment; the powder is mixed into the mastic until it stops sticking to your hands;

It is most convenient to roll out the mastic between two durable plastic bags; Some chefs advise doing this on a table sprinkled with powdered sugar or starch.

Milk mastic

It is the most inexpensive and easiest to manufacture. However, due to its yellowish tint, it is not suitable for cases where white or blue is needed.

To make it you need milk powder, powdered sugar and condensed milk. 250 grams of milk powder should be mixed with the same amount of powdered sugar, then pour in 250 ml of condensed milk. Stir first in a bowl and then on the table until it stops sticking.

Classic mastic with gelatin

10 g of gelatin should be poured with ten tablespoons of hot water and left to swell. After 40 minutes, place the gelatin in a water bath and bring until completely dissolved. Cool at room temperature and add powdered sugar (about 900 g) in small portions into the slightly warm solution. This mastic can be painted with all dyes. It should be stored in the refrigerator, tightly wrapped in two layers of cling film. It is suitable for making both the thinnest flower petals and three-dimensional figures - houses, people, fruits, etc.

Marshmallow mastic

Marshmallow mastic is the most popular of all. Probably because it is easier to manufacture. You need to take a package of white marshmallows or others like these, place them in a microwave-safe bowl, add a tablespoon of lemon juice and microwave for 20 seconds. The mixture will become liquid and can be mixed with suitable food coloring. Stir in the powdered sugar to turn the candy mixture into a plastic dough-mastic. Next, you can roll out the mastic into a layer the size of the cake and cover the dessert with it, or you can mold it into shapes that match the theme of the holiday.

Marzipan

Almond flour, 225 grams, must be mixed with 250 grams of powdered sugar, a teaspoon of lemon juice and one or two egg whites (check the size of the eggs and the consistency of the marzipan dough). Roll out the finished dough 2-3 mm thick into a layer slightly larger than the size of the cake. Coat the cake with apricot jam and cover with marzipan. Carefully smooth out and trim off excess. Marzipan coating is a good protection against dissolution for mastic and fondant. Figurines made from the same marzipan are a fun way to decorate a cake with your own hands at home. Photographs illustrating the use of marzipan crafts when decorating children's cakes clearly demonstrate how original such desserts look.

Ganache

With a very simple composition - dark chocolate and heavy cream in equal quantities, the ganache is not prepared quickly. The chocolate needs to be broken into pieces. Boil one third of the cream and pour into the chocolate. Stir until smooth and put in the refrigerator for six to eight hours. After this time, lightly shake the chocolate mixture and whip the remaining cream into a strong foam. Pour the chocolate mixture into the cream in small portions.

Ganache is applied with a brush to the entire surface of the cake. This is an ideal base for mastic. Bitter chocolate and sugary sweet mastic combine perfectly with each other.

Ganache can be used not only for mastic, but also for glazing fresh fruits, such as strawberries. In this case, powdered sugar should be added to the cream.

Decorating a cake with your own hands at home with fruits is shown in several photographs. Fresh fruit can be dipped in black or white ganache and arranged in tiers, alternating with unglazed fruit.

What is a holiday without guests, gifts and cake? Boring! What a holiday is all about is having fun, socializing, dancing and pampering yourself with all sorts of goodies! If you know how to bake cakes and make delicious creams, that’s already half the success. Today we will look at options on how to decorate a cake at home.

How to decorate a cake at home?

How to decorate a cake at home using cream

First of all, you need to understand the question of which cream is ideal for decorating confectionery products. There are not many of them:

• oil;
• protein;
• creamy.

The base of the butter cream is butter, with a fat content of at least 82%. You can also use condensed milk or powdered sugar to prepare the cream. As for the proportions, when preparing butter cream with condensed milk, it is necessary to take into account the consistency of the milk. Very often, experienced confectioners use boiled condensed milk; it is denser and ensures the stability of the cream. To give the decor the required shade, it is more advisable to use liquid food coloring.

In butter cream You can also add cocoa powder or chocolate melted in a water bath. This technology is ideal for decorating chocolate biscuits and cupcakes.

Protein cream is one of the capricious. Its preparation will require patience and endurance from you. To decorate cakes, custard protein cream is used, the preparation of which occurs in three stages:

• Pour ¼ cup of clean water into the pan and add 6 tablespoons of sugar. Place on the fire and cook the syrup for 3-5 minutes after boiling (checking the readiness is quite easy - dip a spoon into the syrup and lift it so that the finished syrup flows down - if the thread is thick and continuous, your syrup is ready);
• Place 3 cold egg whites in a clean, dry bowl and beat with a mixer until thick white foam (to obtain stable peaks, you can add 3-4 drops of lemon juice or a pinch of citric acid);
• Continuing to beat, pour the prepared sugar syrup into the whites in a thin stream and beat the resulting mass for another 1-2 minutes. At this stage, you can add the necessary flavors and colorings to the cream.

The finished cream is also applied to the cake using a pastry syringe and nozzles. The capriciousness of the cream lies in the fact that overcooked or undercooked sugar syrup will cause the flowers and patterns of the cream to very quickly lose their shape. And overcooked syrup will add bitterness to the cream. To thicken the protein cream, you can use agar-agar (this is a natural product, safe for children and adults).

To prepare the buttercream you will need heavy confectionery cream (at least 32% fat) and powdered sugar. Cream is also a rather capricious ingredient. Before whipping, you need to cool not only them, but also the container in which you will beat the cream, as well as the mixer whisks. Taking time when whipping the cream also plays an important role; a common mistake made by novice cooks is over-whipping the cream. Cold cream is whipped with powdered sugar until stable peaks are obtained. If you doubt that the cream will not lose its shape within 12-24 hours, you can add a special thickener to it, which is sold in almost any supermarket. Buttercream can also be given any color, but the classic option for decorating cakes with cream is the white color of the cream.

How to decorate a cake at home using mastic

Today, confectionery products decorated with mastic figures are very popular. It is also worth clarifying here that there are two options preparing mastic:

• sugar;
• marshmallow.

The first option is more labor-intensive, but guarantees the stability and strength of your figures and flowers. By the way, almost every one of us has come across such figures and flowers - they are sold as decoration for Easter cakes. Sugar and marshmallow mastic are sold ready-made, but you can make them yourself.

To prepare sugar mastic you will need:

• 80 ml water;
• 7 g instant gelatin;
• 15-20 g soft butter;
• 2 tablespoons of glucose (fructose);
• 1 kg of powdered sugar.

Gelatin must be prepared in advance. To do this, fill it with cold water and set aside for 30-40 minutes, then heat the mass until the gelatin is completely dissolved (but do not boil!). Add butter and glucose to hot gelatin, stir until smooth and cool. If you want to give the mastic any shade, then the dye must be added to the hot gelatin. Powdered sugar is added to the mass only after complete cooling. You need to knead the mastic like dough for dumplings (sprinkle the table with powdered sugar and knead the mixture until the mastic stops absorbing the powder).

To prepare marshmallow mastic You will need chewing marshmallows (marshmallows), powdered sugar, and a little butter. The marshmallows must be heated in the microwave or in a water bath until they increase in size by 1.5-2 times (a piece of butter must be added to the container with the marshmallows before heating). Stir the enlarged candies, add dyes and, adding powdered sugar, knead the mass to a consistency similar to plasticine. This mastic is used to cover cakes and create various figures.

You can decorate the cake with fresh or canned fruits, grated chocolate, and coconut.

Among the ways to decorate baked goods, fruit is one of the simplest, but at the same time the most delicious. When you look at a dessert that is beautifully decorated with fresh, juicy fruits, your appetite immediately awakens. Since decorating a cake with fruit is very simple, it can be turned into an entire art that anyone can do.

Many confectionery shops realized this long ago, as a result of which lines of purchased cakes appeared, on which there is a layer of jelly with beautifully arranged fruit slices on top. This invariably attracts the buyer's eye. You too can do something similar with your own hands.

Almost all ways to decorate baked goods with fruit are very simple. One of them is to simply place fresh slices around the cake; naturally, it should be round in shape. This decoration looks very beautiful if the baked goods themselves are covered with white cream or glaze.

Bright fresh fruit slices on a white background create a feeling of airiness in the dessert. This is very easy to do with your own hands. From fruit combinations you can choose, for example, strawberries and currants or blueberries.

Cut the strawberries in half and place the halves, core side up, around the baking circle. Then place a few dark berries next to each strawberry half. And add another similar composition in the middle.

The result is a very simple and elegant dessert decoration. And in the photo it looks very bright and contrasting. In this case, we played with three colors: red (strawberry), dark blue (currant), white (icing).

Dessert for lovers

A suitable decoration for a dessert that you want to dedicate to your loved one is strawberries. And you can get by with just one. It looks chic and appetizing in the photo and in reality, a small round or heart-shaped cake, covered with white cream, which is completely decorated with whole red berries on top, with a strawberry triangle looking up. Agree, such a delicacy evokes romantic thoughts.

Slices of green and orange fruits on white cream

You can also see in the photo that the decoration of green and orange fruit slices looks more delicate on the white cream. It could be kiwi, grapes, orange, lemon, tangerine, pineapple. Again, the easiest way is to tightly place fresh slices on top of the cake, one after another. This will already be delicious.

But you can experiment. For example, create a rose shape with your own hands in the middle of baking. To create it, canned tangerine or peach are good.

Chocolate glaze decor

Fruits are also an excellent decoration for baked goods coated with chocolate glaze. If here, as in the case of white icing, you want to emphasize the contrast of colors, then orange, red and green colors are best suited for this. You can make an asymmetrical decoration of the delicacy in only one part of it from the “petals” of orange, strawberry or raspberry and mint sprigs.

On the rest of the chocolate space you can write your wish in beautiful capital letters with white cream. In the photo it looks very stylish. Decoration on chocolate glaze can also consist only of dark and red berries. It will look less contrasting, but still very attractive.

Decor of a large portion cake

What if you have a large, rectangular-shaped cake to prepare, and you want a fruit garnish on every guest’s plate? To do this, you need to segment the baking surface into the required number of pieces, come up with a fruit decoration and place it on each segment.

That is, you need to come up with a decoration like for one small cake, and then repeat it on all the pieces of the large dessert. It could be something minimal, for example, one raspberry or strawberry. Or, conversely, on a small piece you can make a beautiful pile of different fruit slices. Decorating the cake with fruits in this case will take more time, but the result will definitely please you and your guests.

Children's cakes

A special direction of imagination is needed to decorate children's desserts. A good decoration for such cakes is a layer of fruit slices from representatives of the animal kingdom. Here, start from the shape of a fruit piece or berry and think about what part of the animal’s body it could be. For example, half a strawberry would be perfect for a cat’s ears and paws, round berries would be eyes, and so on.

Fruits in jelly

Cakes with tops decorated with jelly and fruit look more impressive. The dessert takes on a brighter and juicier appearance, and also benefits from the practical side of the issue, since the fruits adhere more firmly to the surface. There are many private companies that decorate cakes and pastries in this way, but it can also be done at home.

To get the desired result, you need to follow simple rules:

1. When the cake is ready to decorate, coat the top with a small amount of jam or marmalade. They just need to cover the entire surface, but not overwhelm the taste. This is done to prevent the jelly from being absorbed into the cake.
2. To ensure that the filling is evenly distributed over the top, but does not spread on the sides, the cake must be placed in a suitable sized mold with high sides.
3. To make the jelly harden faster, before decorating the cake, along with fruits and berries, should be placed in the cold for a couple of hours.
4. Do not pour the dessert right away, let the gelatin mixture thicken a little, but do not overdo it.

Think in advance what color the jelly will be depending on the fruit. If you are decorating the cake with multi-colored fruits, a colorless fill will do, but if you are decorating in a single color, you need to choose a mixture of the appropriate shade.

To make jelly you will need:

• 200 ml water;
• 200 ml of any juice that matches the taste of the cake and fruit used for decoration;
• 20 g gelatin;
• 3 tbsp. sugar (optional).

Gelatin should be filled with water and left for about half an hour. Then pour the juice into the pan, add sugar if necessary, bring to a boil and pour in the gelatin mixture in a thin stream, stirring constantly. Wait until all the gelatin has dissolved and remove the pan from the heat.

While the jelly cools and acquires the desired consistency, create a fruit composition as you wish. This can be a regular circular pattern or a more complex pattern. When the filling is ready, begin to distribute it over the surface of the dessert, moving in a spiral from the middle to the edges. To allow the jelly to harden, place it in the refrigerator. After this, if desired, you can decorate it with additional elements - chocolate chips, cream, etc.

Video about decorating a cake with fruits