How to Dry Sugar Mastic for a Cake

Mastic or edible plasticine cover sponge cake, sand and honey cakes. From the elastic mass create flowers, reliefs, drawings, three-dimensional figures that make confectionery products beautiful and refined. Sugar paste is bought in a store or cooked yourself at home. In this case, you have to wait at least a day so that the mastic ceases to be sticky to the hands. But if the cake needs to be decorated quickly, resort to small tricks that significantly reduce the time of solidification of the sweet mass.

How Long Does It Take to Dry Fondant for a Cake?

Drying pastry takes 6-30 hours, depending on the composition of the product, its quantity, temperature, humidity.

Confectioners are advised to make preparations for decorating 2 days before decorating the cake.

Thinly rolled sugar paste with gelatin dries faster than others. To dry, leave the mastic in a dry, well-ventilated room.

Ways to dry cake mastic quickly

The consistency, plasticity of the confectionery material largely depends on the quality of powdered sugar. If particles of powdered sugar got into the product, the mastic will tear when rolling out.

To increase plasticity, wrap the finished sugar paste in clingfilm and send it to the fridge for 15-20 minutes.

If the mastic remains sticky and it is difficult to work with it, continue kneading the material, adding powdered sugar. If the store product is sticky, sprinkle the work surface with corn or rice starch.

If there is no time to wait for mastic to dry naturally, express methods are used:

1. Paste that does not contain cocoa butter is dried in the oven for 3-10 minutes at 80°C. If bubbles appear, the first signs of deformation, blotting, immediately turn off the heat, remove the product from the oven. Smooth the soft material with a pastry iron. After a maximum of 5 minutes it will harden.
2. Roll out the mastic 2-3 mm thick. A thin layer will dry faster. Rolling out the paste with starch will speed up the drying process even more. You can use powdered sugar, but with it, edible plasticine will stay soft longer.
3. Turn on a table lamp (not necessarily high power), point it at the soft mastic nearby. If the humidity of the room is low, the decorating material will dry in 1-3 hours.
4. Put the tray with a thinly rolled layer of paste in the oven. Turn it on, leaving the temperature at zero. It will take an hour of time for the mastic to stabilize.

You can prepare a quick-drying mastic at once:

• Soak a teaspoon of gelatin in a glass of cold water;
• After thickening, add 30 ml of vegetable oil, juice of half a lemon;
• Melt the gelatin mixture in a water bath;
• add 400 grams of sifted powdered sugar;
• thoroughly knead the edible plasticine.

But even dried sugar-gelatin fondant will not hold its shape in the finished product if the cake is rained on or left under a lid in the heat.

How to dry a mastic figure

Mastic figures dry faster when the air circulates around them intensely. A fan can help. Line a baking tray with a silicone mat or silicone paper. Lay out the flat figurines, turn on the fan directed at the decor. It will take a few hours for the fondant to dry completely.

Figurines, already installed on the cake, dry with a hair dryer. Turn on the device in cold blowing mode. Direct the air jet on all sides away from the decorations.

To dry faster three-dimensional figures, they are assembled from small parts directly during the decoration of cakes or immediately make them hollow inside. To do this, you will need special pastry nozzles, which are removed after the end of molding.

Q&A

Beginning confectioners often doubt the correctness of their actions, asking questions about the ways of drying mastic, options for correcting mistakes made.

Why doesn't the fondant dry and what to do?

There are several reasons why sugar paste does not dry for a long time. Complicates the process by failure to comply with the proportions specified in the recipe. Especially long remains soft material with the addition of a large amount of liquid dyes. Prolongs the drying of high humidity in the room, improper unrolling mastic.

What to do if the fondant cracked during drying?

Do not roll out too thin pastry paste. If the layer is thinner than 2-3 mm, it will not only tear and crack, but also emphasize all the irregularities of the surface of the cake. Other causes of cracked decor are sugar granules in the mastic, covering the cake immediately after assembly without allowing time for it to settle.

The best solution to the problem is to remove the cracked coating and replace it with a new one. If this cannot be done, a few drops of vegetable oil are applied to the problem areas and smoothed with a pastry iron until the surface is perfectly smooth. The resulting bubbles are pierced with a needle and passed again with the iron.

During drying, not only mastic covers crack, but also three-dimensional figures. This occurs due to uneven drying of the inner and outer layers of sweet mass. To avoid this mistake, it is better to make large figures from dried small parts, fastening them with egg white.

Can I dry mastic in the microwave?

In a microwave oven, mastic is not dried, but softened if it has become stony and cannot be kneaded. It is enough to turn on the microwave with the paste for 10-15 seconds and then knead it with your fingers so that the material has acquired working properties.

It is better to dry "plasticine" in a dry, cool room. A fan, hair dryer or oven will help speed up the process.

What happens if you dry mastic in the refrigerator?

Mastic figures (especially small ones), even well-packed, in the refrigerator can get wet from condensation, deform. Increased humidity and droplets on the surface do not contribute to the drying of the paste.

To learn not only how to make exquisite mastic decorations, but also to preserve them until the solemn moment, you need knowledge and practical skills, which are mastered over time.