Decorated Christmas Cake

My last post was about making mince pies, this post is about one of the other two other bakes I did over the Christmas period... Well this one isn't really baking but im going to tell you about it anyway! They were both made for Christmas day - a Christmas cake for my family and proper gingerbread biscuits for my colleagues (I was working on the early shift Christmas day).

I didn't actually make the Christmas cake (life is too short), I just decorated it. As I have said many times on this blog, I don't do creativeness. I can bake a cake but decorating it...not so good. However, I am currently in the process of making a cake for one of my work colleagues and I need to practice putting rolled icing onto cakes, so it was good timing.

Naturally, I started with a light jam layer all over the cake (slightly warmed in the microwave) as this helps the marzipan stick to the cake. The marzipan followed and then the icing. I'd bought the ready rolled marzipan but with the icing I rolled it out myself. I was a bit timid at first as I didn't want it to go wrong but don't be too afraid and gentle, my best advice would be 'just get on with it'. 

Use a rolling pin to help lay the mazipan onto the cake, then using your hands, press down the sides using a little force. Cut away the excess round the bottom of the cake, don't worry if it doesn't look particularly neat on the bottom, the icing will hide it. I used a cake smoother/polisher to quickly to go over the marzipan to make sure there are no lumps or bumps, if you don't have a cake smoother/polisher than just use your hands. This is then exactly repeated with the icing! Once again, if the bottom of the icing around the cake doesn't look that neat, just put a ribbon around it and pin it at the back (remember to take the pins out!). 

My friend made one snowman and I made the other, she's very arty farty so her snowman was better than mine....For the trees, I coloured white royal icing with edible green dye (and ended up looking like the Hulk in the process) and let it re-firm up in the fridge. While it was firming I used a cookie cutter in the shape of a Christmas tree as a stencil onto cardboard. I cut out the cardboard tree and painted edible glue onto one of the sides, I then used the cookie cutter to cut out the tree from the green icing and stuck it to the cardboard. Repeat on the other side. To keep the trees standing up I pushed in some cake wiring so they would have more stability and that meant the trees inserted into the cake. Using the edible glue I decorated each tree with various sugar crystals/balls. 

My mum cut out the stars, glittered them and then stuck them to the cake using the edible glue. Lastly, the family santa was placed on the tree. That santa is older than I am and has been on every Christmas cake my family has had. Keeping in with tradition!

Yes, it looks like a child made it but hey, at least it was decorated!