Christmas Cake 2017
It's been a month since I made the Christmas cake and in the meantime it has been well fed with quite a lot of whisky. It's only a few days now till the big day so it was time to get it finished off. The first step was to put the marzipan on. This is what the cake looked like beforehand.
When decorating a cake, you want the surface to be as flat as possible and the easiest way to do that is to turn the cake over and use the base. Ordinarily you should use apricot jam as the glue to make the marzipan stick on the cake but I always end up with a huge jar of jam left over that no one likes. I've tried using shredless orange marmalade instead this year. I only used a little bit so that the flavour isn't too overpowering but there's orange in the cake anyway so hopefully it won't be too bad.
The next step is the icing. I've always used Royal icing for Christmas cakes but I didn't have the time or the inclination this year, so I bought a packet of ready to roll icing instead. I sat it above the radiator for a while to soften it up a little, and then just kneaded it for ages and ages until it was really pliable. I measured over the cake from one edge to the other with a piece of string - easier than a ruler! - so I knew how big it needed to be rolled out. Before I put the icing on, I brushed the marzipan with freshly boiled water to help the icing stick. It went on really easily, no problems with it at all! I was actually rather pleased with how nicely it came out.
Last step was the decorating. I'd seen a picture somewhere where the cake was topped with an artful pile of stars that had been cut out of the leftover icing and decorated with silver balls. I thought that looked rather nice and not too difficult so I had a go at doing something similar. I tried to cut the stars freehand but they didn't come out well at all. I'd got a small star template which was helpful except that it was really quite tiny. I managed to get three different sizes of stars from it though: I cut out stars the same size as the template, then made ones a little larger by cutting a little way out from the side of the template and then larger ones by using the middle sized stars as a template and cutting out a little way from their edge. I tried to pile them artfully but it looked a mess, so I arranged them in a sweep round the edge of the cake instead with some extra silver balls added in and that worked quite well. I'm glad that I didn't go overboard with the silver balls though, it would have been really easy to use too many.
Ta-dah, the finished cake! I don't think it's come out too badly at all. The icing was a lot easier to work with than I thought, certainly much easier than the fondant I'd used for the Deadpool cake. I'll be able to tell how much of a success it's been in a few days when I can finally cut a piece and try it!
When decorating a cake, you want the surface to be as flat as possible and the easiest way to do that is to turn the cake over and use the base. Ordinarily you should use apricot jam as the glue to make the marzipan stick on the cake but I always end up with a huge jar of jam left over that no one likes. I've tried using shredless orange marmalade instead this year. I only used a little bit so that the flavour isn't too overpowering but there's orange in the cake anyway so hopefully it won't be too bad.
The next step is the icing. I've always used Royal icing for Christmas cakes but I didn't have the time or the inclination this year, so I bought a packet of ready to roll icing instead. I sat it above the radiator for a while to soften it up a little, and then just kneaded it for ages and ages until it was really pliable. I measured over the cake from one edge to the other with a piece of string - easier than a ruler! - so I knew how big it needed to be rolled out. Before I put the icing on, I brushed the marzipan with freshly boiled water to help the icing stick. It went on really easily, no problems with it at all! I was actually rather pleased with how nicely it came out.
Last step was the decorating. I'd seen a picture somewhere where the cake was topped with an artful pile of stars that had been cut out of the leftover icing and decorated with silver balls. I thought that looked rather nice and not too difficult so I had a go at doing something similar. I tried to cut the stars freehand but they didn't come out well at all. I'd got a small star template which was helpful except that it was really quite tiny. I managed to get three different sizes of stars from it though: I cut out stars the same size as the template, then made ones a little larger by cutting a little way out from the side of the template and then larger ones by using the middle sized stars as a template and cutting out a little way from their edge. I tried to pile them artfully but it looked a mess, so I arranged them in a sweep round the edge of the cake instead with some extra silver balls added in and that worked quite well. I'm glad that I didn't go overboard with the silver balls though, it would have been really easy to use too many.
Ta-dah, the finished cake! I don't think it's come out too badly at all. The icing was a lot easier to work with than I thought, certainly much easier than the fondant I'd used for the Deadpool cake. I'll be able to tell how much of a success it's been in a few days when I can finally cut a piece and try it!