Pastillage

Pastillage is a sugar based dough used for decorating and creating decorations for pastry, show piece work and decorative molded forms. Made with icing sugar, gelatine, water, and vinegar. The dough is much like clay which makes it easy to shape by hand.

In making the pastillage, you will need:

- 2 Medium sized cake board

- Rectangular plastic cutouts

- 1 Sharp Cutter

- Cardboard cutouts (Used to guide cutting the shapes out of pastillage)

Pastillage

1kg Icing Sugar 

10gm Gelatine 

50ml Water

50ml Vinegar

First, sift the icing sugar. Then in a small bowl, dissolve the gelatine with water until the gelatine forms a jelly-like finish. After that use double boiler to melt the gelatine until it turns back to liquid form. Mix the icing sugar, gelatine and vinegar together. 

If the mixture seems dry, carefully add several drop of vinegar and knead well. Wrap and allow the dough to rest for at least 30 minutes. Roll the resulting dough into small portions of the pastillage using a rolling pin and cornstarch as a non stick compound. 

Shape it as you may, then place the pastillage pieces on a sheet of plastic cutouts and leave them to dry.

At this stage, you will need:

- Piping bag

- Icing spatula

- Mixer

Royal Icing
2nos Egg White

350g Icing Sugar

To glue the pastillage together, use royal icing as a form of adhesive. In the mixer mix egg white and icing sugar together until they form hard peak which is a sign that it should be ready for usage. It is usually used as a form of adhesive to stick each piece in place as well as its potential for usage in making decorations which shows texture, form or even height! 

After you have shaped the royal icing into the desired pattern as well as attached the pieces together, leave it to dry on a warm surface preferably higher than room temperature but not too hot as it will melt the royal icing as well as the surface it forms. 

Lastly, when it is all nicely dried, decorate the pastillage piece with colors or any form of decoration you may want it to end up with and there you go! 

It's That Easy!