Tuesday 20 December 2011

Decorating the Christmas cake

I made my Christmas fruit cake way back in October, used the Delia Smith recipe that I am sure so many people use. Seemed to go ok, although next time I will use a smaller tin (even though I used the size that the recipe suggested) as my cake seems a little flat rather than deep!

Anyway last night I put the marzipan on the cake, probably not in the right way of doing it but it worked for me. Just rolled it all out, placed the cake on top of it, pressed the cake down so it imprinted, spread a thin layer of jam over the cake, and placed back into the indent. Then I folded the marzipan around the cake and probably looked as if I was caressing the cake when I was smoothing it over! I then trimmed the marzipan around the edge, and 'oh damn' just happened to have some left over that wasn't big enough to use for anything else (sort of)....it didn't hang around long that's for sure! Mmm.

I didn't leave the marzipan to dry out as much as I have read to, but wanted it done as next few days are busy. Tried to do the icing the same way I had done the marzipan but figured it wasn't going to work that way after a quick first attempt of it nearly sticking and ripping. So I turned the cake right way up and then spread some hot water over the marzipan with a brush to give it a sticky layer, and placed the rolled out icing over it. 'Caressed' the sides and trimmed.

Now the fun bit...

I used the left over icing and some from another pack to make the decorations, made up some colours from the ones I had in the cupboard already, and had some of them silver and gold balls (have no idea what they are actually called).

Last year I kept pictures from magazines of craft/baking things I liked the look of and put them in a folder, I loved this cake that had an icing gingerbread man on so decided to give it a go seeing as I had a cookie cutter about the right size. I used a cocktail stick to make the indents all around the gingerbread men. For the candy canes I just had 'sausage rolls' of white and red strips of icing and twisted together tightly and then shaped.

I stuck the icing parts on with just water. Once it was all stuck on I then got some writing icing out to make the finer details such as the ribbon on the presents.

Then got a ribbon and put around the edge.

Now I just hope it tastes as good as it looks...not sure if I can wait until Christmas though with it staring at me! Quite impressed with my first attempt at Christmas cake though :) although bit un-impressed with the food colouring as that was supposed to be green not lime coloured!




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