Tuile Paste Decorations

This versatile decorating paste can be formed or made into almost any shape you like. Tuile decorating paste consists of only four ingredients in equal weights — butter, sugar, egg whites, and flour. Due to the gluten in the flour, the shapes may shrink just a little during baking, but they will do so evenly all around, so provided it is taken into consideration where it will matter, the shrinkage does not cause a problem. The apparent solution to avoiding or reducing shrinkage is to reduce the gluten strength of the flour (replacing a portion of the flour with starch), but this option is not viable because, the baked pieces would become too fragile. To avoid developing the gluten any more than necessary, take care not to overmix the batter once the flour has been incorporated.