How to pour dripping chocolate on a cake: making the right icing and decorating tips

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

The statement that “the cakes in the store are beautiful, but tasteless, and homemade cakes are good, just look so-so” is little consolation for unfortunate confectioners. You have to strive for perfection in everything. Why not compete with confectionery factories in the art of decorating cakes? Recently, roses and cream waves have already gone out of fashion. Smudges are in increasing demand.

It seems that making such a decoration is elementary simple. It is only necessary to water the top surface of the cake so that the chocolate or buttercream fudge flows from the edges along its sides. But in practice, everything turns out not very aesthetically pleasing. It turns out either a puddle at the base of the product, or (if the fondant is too thick) sloppy thick bloopers on top.

In this article we will tell you how to pour chocolate with smudges on the cake. On the Internet, you can find many recipes with step-by-step instructions for this technology. And almost all of them are working. Let's explore them all to choose the right one.

Preparing the cake

Would you say that the cakes have been baked for a long time, soaked in cognac or syrup and smeared with cream? But in order for the smudges to lie perfectly, you need to prepare the surface of the cake. And not only its top, but also its sides. Surfaces should be as flat and smooth as possible. The slightest skew will cause the liquid fondant to change course and flow in the wrong direction.

The second step in preparing the cake is the primer. Just as an artist, before painting a picture, applies a thick layer of white paint to the canvas, so the confectioner must cover the surface of the product with glaze or cream. After all, fondant can be absorbed into the dough. As the photos show, a cake with chocolate drips looks best when the trickles mostly reach the middle and are placed parallel to each other. Therefore, a perfectly flat surface of the sides of the product is also very important.

Basic principles for making chocolate smudges on a chocolate cake

Of course, the main thing in this process is the consistency of the glaze. If it is too liquid, then there will be ugly bald spots on the top of the product, and the whole mass will gather at the foot of the cake in a puddle, which will also wet the bottom cake. If the glaze is too thick, there will be no smudges at all. How to find this fine line in the consistency, so that the streams beautifully descend in waves to the middle of the height of the product and stop there?

And here we apply a technology that can be briefly described as: "cold surface - hot cream."By sticking to it, you will not wonder how to pour smudged chocolate on a cake - physical laws such as gravity and temperature change will do everything for you. Therefore, the cake should be well chilled, and the icing should be hot.

What to make smudges from

Should I say that such trickles may not necessarily be chocolate? Now mousse smudges, caramel, cream are popular. If we are working with chocolate, then we can take bitter black, dessert, milk or white. The main thing is that the tile should be without fillers (nuts, raisins, yoghurt pralines). But, depending on which chocolate we choose, the proportions of fudge also change.

It is impossible to specify the exact amount of cream for making ganache. Therefore, before pouring chocolate over the cake with smudges, we will experiment on an ordinary glass glass (not faceted, but with smooth sides). To do this, we also put it in the refrigerator. Cooks know several recipes for making smudge fudge. This is:

• chocolate and low fat cream ganache;
• glaze made from butter, milk and cocoa powder;
• from condensed milk, flour and cocoa;
• butter and chocolate meringue.

In fact, there are more recipes. Let's take a look at the most popular ones.

Ganache

The easiest cake drip recipe is chocolate and cream. This liquid cream is called ganache. We will need a bar of dark dark chocolate (one hundred grams) and 80 milliliters of low-fat 10 percent cream. If you are the proud ownermicrowave oven, the case will be argued faster. If not, it doesn't matter, you can get by with a small fire on the stove. But then you need to take metal dishes.

1. Chocolate break into pieces, pour cream.
2. Put the bowl on the fire or in the microwave for 30 seconds. It doesn't matter if the chocolate pieces melt completely in the liquid or not. We must not overheat it, otherwise it will curdle in cream. It is necessary that the chocolate slowly melts until smooth.
3. If there are separate pieces, and the cream has already cooled down, put the bowl on the fire or in the microwave for ten seconds.
4. Stir the mass so as not to enrich it with air bubbles. Properly made ganache flows off the spoon in a wide ribbon.

Test for the right consistency

We still don't know whether the fondant is thick or thin enough. Therefore, before pouring chocolate over the cake with smudges, let's experiment on a glass. Take it out of the fridge and put it upside down on a flat surface. Scoop up the fondant with a teaspoon. It can be either ganache or icing. But you should know that the watering should not be too hot, because the liquid will not freeze even on very cold glass, and even more so on the cake. The optimum temperature is around 35-40 degrees.

Try it on your hand first: it should be hot, but not scalding. Now we drip onto the glass. We look at how the trickle flowed. If it reaches the bottom of the dish, we throw a few pieces of chocolate into the fondant. The mass gathered on top of a greasy blot and did notwants to go nowhere? Add a tablespoon of hot cream, stir. By experimenting like this, we will achieve the perfect consistency. Now you can pour this ganache (creamy chocolate) over the cake with smudges.

Mirror glaze recipe

Of course, you can just melt a tile in the microwave and cover the top of the product with it. You can also make smudges. But you will get a hard, matte chocolate crust that will crunch and go into ugly cracks as soon as you try to cut off a piece of cake. Butter will make the glaze more plastic and, moreover, will give it a mirror shine. Making this fondant for cute smudges is also very easy.

For a 100-gram bar of dark chocolate, we need 70 grams of butter. Since we are not using cream in this case, we need to think about how to melt the mass. There is nothing to think about putting a bowl of chocolate on the fire. You can melt it in the microwave (30 seconds). But it is better to do it in a water bath.

1. Place a metal bowl with pieces of chocolate on a large container of hot water.
2. While stirring, we wait until the heat exchange process turns the solid bars into a liquid homogeneous mass.
3. Remove the bowl from the water bath and dip the butter into the chocolate.
4. Stir until smooth. A good glaze, when hot, should also drip off the spoon in a wide ribbon.
5. Regulate its consistency with oil.

Frosting

Now let's see how beautiful it is to pour chocolate over the cake with smudges. Mirror glaze, as a rule, covers the entire top of the product. The cake looks awesome. In addition, it can be decorated with various mastic figures. After all, it is known that powdered sugar does not melt on chocolate. The protein cream "sits" on it just as well. In addition to mastic decorations, you can decorate the sides of the cake with smudges. Baking should be as cold as possible, and the icing should be very warm, almost hot.

The cake needs to be set on a surface that could be rotated. Pour frosting into the center of the top. Spread the fondant with a spatula or spatula, pushing it to the edge. We try to make the streams flow at the same distance from each other and in parallel. You can use a knife for this. At the same distance, we cut small recesses, which are destined to become channels for smudges.

Budget-friendly fudge

Expensive chocolate can be replaced with cheap cocoa powder. Since the product is reheated, there will be little noticeable difference.

1. Slightly heat five tablespoons of milk.
2. Dissolve 4 tbsp. l. sugar and 1 tbsp. l. butter.
3. Stir until all crystals are gone.
4. Only after that carefully pour in two tablespoons of cocoa powder. Its amount can be adjusted depending on what color of fudge - milk or dark chocolate you want to achieve.
5. The more cocoa,the more bitterness will be felt. Therefore, the amount of sugar needs to be increased.

How to make smudges on a chocolate cake prepared in such a cheap way? The technology remains unchanged. The cake should stand in the refrigerator for at least four hours. And fudge should be moderately hot. You can experiment first on a glass to check the consistency of the frosting.

Milk ganache

If you folded your cake from dark chocolate cakes, then you can decorate it with contrasting white smudges. They are easy to make with on hand:

• 70 milliliters of very heavy cream (at least 33 percent);
• tablespoon of sugar;
• 20 grams of cocoa butter and a bar of white chocolate.

1. Start cooking ganache by melting cocoa butter in the microwave (2 minutes).
2. Now break the chocolate into it.
3. Put back in the oven for 30 seconds. Stir thoroughly until all pieces are melted.
4. Let's boil the cream, dissolve the sugar in them.
5. Add the milk mass in four steps to the butter-chocolate one.
6. Stir thoroughly each time to make a smooth emulsion.
7. White smudges on a chocolate cake will look neat and reach the middle of the cake if the creamy ganache is cooled to 30 degrees.

Colored fondant

Food coloring gives us the opportunity to diversify decor not only with black and white trickles. We can make them in all colors of the rainbow. Such smudges of chocolate will look especially beautiful on a cake with mousse or covered with yogurt cream. However, the dyes must be taken appropriate. If they are fat soluble, do so.

1. Melt the white chocolate bar.
2. Pour in 30 grams of refined vegetable oil.
3. Stir.
4. When the icing has cooled to 30 degrees, add food coloring.
5. We adjust its amount to get the color of the desired intensity.

If we have ordinary food coloring, we act differently. Cooking creamy ganache. Let it cool, add the dye.

Only side smudges

It happens that we want to decorate the top of the product in some other way. Not glaze, but, for example, cream or mousse. How to pour chocolate with smudges on a cake so that they are only on the side and do not affect the top of the product? We prepare fudge for streams according to the recipe you like. But we reduce the amount of all ingredients. Take a spoon and scoop up a small amount of fondant. We drip in the right place and watch how the liquid, instantly solidifying, flows down.

Some chefs use a pouch. But for this you need to fill your hand, because you need to squeeze the bag through a certain distance. The job will go better if you set the cake on a rotating surface. Now you know how to decorate your culinary masterpiece with delicious smudges.