Make licitars on your own!

The fact that the beauty of licitars may lend nobility to some premises, and that giving or receiving them as a present may provide large satisfaction is self-understandable. But, the attempt to make your own licitars may provide large satisfaction, too. In its beauty they probably may not compete with licitars made by skilled hands of masters, trained for that for years, but they offer endless possibilities to express creativity and personality. One may achieve nice results even with some easily available replacement items. Therefore, lets work!
 

If you are a do-it-yourself maker and you prepared your own licitars, take pride in them, send a photo to us and write down your experiences. We will award the best creations, and publish there photos in our photo gallery!

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Procedure

At first, with the addition of licitars yeast, knead dough of flour and water with melted sugar. Roll out dough flat and make licitars with moulds, i.e. form them with sheet metal licitar moulds for cutting. Place shaped dough into a baking sheet, and bake it in the oven until it gets light yellow color.
Thus baked cakes shall be stick together with the mixture of flour and water, with the hanging string put in-between each two of them. Dunking, i.e. dipping licitars into the liquid preparation of regular gelatin colored with powdered food coloring (for example for coloring Eastern eggs) follows, accompanied by hanging licitars to dry. Finally, decoration of licitars follows, i.e. frills, for which edible mixture (ajs) is used, of relatively complex recipe.
In any case, the paper tube or cake decoration syringe with the appropriate tip (‘tilna’) is filled with ready made ajs mixture and the licitars decorated with white tendrils, colorful flowers, green grass or similar.

In the end, what is the best in case of licitars, if you don’t like the creation, you may freely eat it.


Recipe

Dough:

1 kg sugar
6 dl water
3 dkg of licitar yeast
2 kg of plain flour

Glaze:

1/3 kg g
1 l water
Food coloring

Decoration:

Gelatin
Sugar syrup
Potato flour
Food coloring


Secrets of craft

Licitar moulds (šteheri) are the largest sacred thing of craftsmen – gingerbread makers. They are handmade of copper or galvanized sheet, giving by its unique shape the soul as a present to the sweet dough, from which licitars of recognizable shape are made. Therefore, their owners keep them jealously, passing it over from one generation to the other. Nevertheless, to the do-it-yourself makers even the moulds bought in some large supermarket will be useful.

Ajs is edible mixture for licitar decoration. As a rule, it has relatively complex recipe, which gingerbread makers unwillingly reveal, whereas also some ingredients are difficult to get. Well, do-it-yourself makers should not give up at this step, but they may try with ajs made of powered sugar, egg whites mixture and water. If you wish the color different from white for decoration, you may color ajs with food coloring.

Licitar yeast, also called heartshorn or powdered baking ammonia (ammonium bicarbonate in its composition). This chemical substance of strong smell (on ammonium) has been used since the past times by gingerbread makers for dough of their gingerbread cakes and licitars to rise, and for their products to get specific taste. Also, it was used in households for preparing some cakes, before it was replaced by modern baking soda, or even newer baking powder.