Self-taught pastry chef Kristina Dolnik makes unique cakes without mastic

Confectionery craftsmanship has long been elevated to the rank of high art, and his works can sometimes quite compete with the masterpieces of famous sculptors and artists. The fact that there is still a place for innovation in the confectionery business was proved by 32-year-old Kiev resident Kristina Dolnik, who creates sweet masterpieces worthy of a place in the museum.

An underwater world with corals and marine inhabitants, a raging ocean with realistic sheep on the waves, a druze of amethyst crystals made of colored caramel… I can't even believe that all this is edible and created by the hands of a master who does not even have a culinary education.

An economist by profession, Kristina hated cooking and standing at the stove since childhood. In her student years, in order to avoid this element of independent life, she tried to eat ready-made food in a cafe, interrupted herself with fruit and yogurt. Then the girl got married and gave birth to a daughter, and then I had to gather my will into a fist and learn to cook.

Kristina was brought together by chance with the confectionery art. When her sister got married, she was so carried away by the search for the best restaurant, host and dress that when it came to ordering sweets, it turned out that the treasury of the future newlyweds was already empty.

Kristina made the cake in a marine theme, as her sister and her husband are fond of yachting. The product caused an unprecedented delight among the guests and gradually new customers began to appear at the newly-made confectioner. Today, orders from Kristina is painted for a year and a half ahead, and among the buyers are Ukrainian celebrities and large businessmen.

The secret of such popularity is in the non-trivial plots that she implements in cakes. Among the personal bestsellers that brought popularity to Kristina's workshop are cakes with water. The masters were inspired to create such masterpieces by water sculptures made of epoxy resin.

In order not to answer hundreds of repeated questions about how to make such a cake, the girl created an author's video course, and very soon the cake became mega-popular on Instagram and got into the trends of the year. There were also scandals — many began to attribute the authorship to themselves. But Kristina managed to restore justice and now leading confectioners from Russia are turning to her for recipes for "water" cakes Russia, Mexico, Germany, the USA and France.

Kristina does not like to repeat the plots of cakes, but she never refuses regular customers. They tend to rely on the taste of the girl. The phrase "surprise us" acts on Kristina like a shot of a starting pistol before a race. At the first stage, the master determines the plot — draws them from sculptures, photographs, films and his own imagination. Sometimes, in order to implement an idea, you have to draw sketches and cut out entire layouts.

The confectioner has a lot of pastry spatulas, spatulas, a kitchen machine, pastry bags, brushes, cuttings, stacks, a spray gun and a favorite airbrush at hand. Kristina tries to minimize the amount of harmful ingredients in her cakes, so she does not like mastic, and thanks to the airbrush, she uses dyes to a minimum.

For example, a cake with an underwater world, in addition to jelly, is made of chocolate sponge cake on cocoa, lemon curd, chocolate ganache on Belgian dark chocolate, chocolate mousse on Belgian milk chocolate, and is covered with "velour" (chocolate crust).

It takes an average of 2-4 days to create one product. But there was a cake in Kristina's practice, which took almost a month of painstaking work. The girl was making a copy of the galleon "Black Pearl" from the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean". According to the idea, it was a ship made of dark chocolate, thrown out on the confectionery sand.

Crazy ideas from There are still a lot of Kristina, but not everyone finds their client. For example, a girl likes to work with confectionery compositions that imitate stones and concrete. As a basis, she takes the work of her friend the sculptor from Spain.

Kristina works with cakes of any complexity, but the permissible weight of the product, as a rule, does not exceed 10 kg. The thing is that the girl works without assistants, and dragging a heavy cake into the refrigerator is not so easy.

For the fact that she managed to reach such a level in the confectionery business, Kristina thanks her husband and his constructive criticism. He constantly made comments to his wife that the cake was not perfect and neat enough, and brought up in her a desire to constantly improve.