Mirror Glaze for Cake

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   How do you make mirror glaze for a cake? Gather the ingredients. Any gelatin works — sheet or powdered. Use filtered water. Choose natural condensed milk, with no vegetable additives. The food coloring should be fat-soluble, in a color of your choice.

2. Step 2:

   

   Soak the gelatin in ice water. You can replace some of the water with ice cubes. Soak sheet gelatin for no more than 7–10 minutes, then take it out and squeeze it. If you have powdered gelatin, cover it with ice water in a 1:6 ratio — that is, 12 g of gelatin takes 72 g of water. Measure everything on a digital scale.

3. Step 3:

   

   Take a tall beaker or the cup of an immersion blender, put the condensed milk in it, and the finely chopped white chocolate on top.

4. Step 4:

   

   In a saucepan, combine the water, sugar, and glucose syrup, set it over the heat, and gradually warm the mixture to 40°C (105°F), until the sugar dissolves. At this point don't stir the sugar — just nudge the saucepan gently across the stove, which helps the sugar dissolve faster.

5. Step 5:

   

   Once the sugar has dissolved, raise the heat and wait for the mixture to boil. Start taking the syrup's temperature with a digital thermometer. Stirring with a spoon, bring the syrup up to 103°C (217°F). At this stage it's very important to watch the temperature: if the syrup is undercooked, the glaze will run off the sides of the cake; overcook it, and the syrup will be too thick to pour over the cake.

6. Step 6:

   

   Pour the hot syrup into the beaker with the condensed milk — the chocolate will start to melt from the heat. Take the temperature of the beaker's contents again.

7. Step 7:

   

   When it reaches 85°C (185°F), add the gelatin. You can first melt the bloomed powdered gelatin a little in the microwave and pour it into the beaker. Stir everything gently.

8. Step 8:

   

   Add a few drops of food coloring and start blending the mixture with an immersion blender on low speed until you get a smooth emulsion. Hold the blender head at a 45-degree angle — this keeps bubbles from forming and lets them disappear into the vortex.

9. Step 9:

   

   If bubbles do form, strain the glaze into another beaker through a sieve. Press plastic wrap directly onto its surface and refrigerate it for 12–24 hours to mature and stabilize.

10. Step 10:

    

    A day later, take the glaze out of the fridge and bring it up to its working temperature of 30–35°C (86–95°F) in the microwave. You can pour it over well-frozen mousse cakes or pastries with a perfectly smooth surface.

11. Step 11:

    

    The mirror glaze is perfect if nearby objects reflect in it as in a mirror. Here's to beautiful desserts!