Glazes are one of those preparations which every amateur pastry chef will , sooner or later, face. Why glazing?

It seems like a trivial question, but it is not. Glazes have multiple purposes:

• Decorative: think of water icing or royal icing on cookies

• Palatability (maybe I could have chosen a simpler word, but this is really the most appropriate :)): that is to improve the taste and texture of a very simple base (think of the white Sacher sponge cake).

• Preserving humidity: the topping glazes slow down the loss of water from the underlying dough, for example in a sponge cake.

Some glazes are very easy to make, others require some practice. In addition to the preparation phase, there is the of process of glazing, whose level of difficulty varies from glaze to glaze.

Let's see the most used glazes:

Water glaze

It is one of the simplest. It is made with water and icing sugar and is suitable for decorating biscuits and shortbread, but also brioches and plum cakes. This glaze remains fairly shiny. Part of the water can be replaced with lemon or orange juice, for a more acidic taste.

Royal icing

Similar to water glaze, it includes the addition of egg white. It remains more crunchy and can be coloured with the addition of food colouring, as well as the water glaze. It is mainly indicated for covering shortcrust pastry and sablee.

Fondant

It is a particular glaze that is prepared with granulated sugar, glucose and water. It can be flavoured and is used to decorate eclairs and beignets. Fondant is very complex to prepare. However, it is available ready-made in specialized stores or online, of course :)

Chocolate coating

It is "simply" melted and tempered chocolate. As trivial as it may seem, it is instead one of the most difficult glazes to manage, because it requires a correct tempering of the chocolate. It remains crunchy and is used to cover biscuits, meringues, honeycombs.

Chocolate, fruit and caramel glaze

Better known as ganache, this glaze is made from fresh cream and chocolate (white, milk chocolate, dark). Often gelatin is added to make it thicken more quickly. Thanks to the presence of the cream, these glazes remain soft and are suitable for covering sponge cake bases. By replacing the chocolate with fruit puree or caramel, you get variants that are always valid for covering soft bases.

Tips and tricks

• The addition of thickening agents (gelatin or pectin) to the ganache is not essential, but it helps a lot to obtain a good final result: in other words, the icing will stop dripping after a while in the fridge.

• Some glazes, such as chocolate, fruit or caramel glazes, require several covering steps to obtain the right thickness.

• It is necessary to put the product to be glazed on a cooling grid, for an optimal aesthetic result.

What icing to try now? With the Christmas period looming, I would be tempted by a nice royal icing with which to decorate some cookies :)