Christmas Cake

The second half of the winter term on my sugarcraft course was taken up with designing and creating our Christmas cakes. We were to use patchwork cutters to create designs on the top so the first week we needed to decide what we were going to do. After much consideration I decided to create a robin and some snowdrops. 

The first step was to make the Christmas cake, I used Delia's Smiths recipe but I replaced the booze with orange juice. This worked perfectly well and the cake has lasted many weeks (mid october to Christmas). 

We covered the cake with marzipan, this was slightly more complex than I would imagine but wasn't tricky. We firstly coated the cake in heated apricot jam. We then rolled out a sausage of marzipan and stuck this around the top rim of the cake. Turned the cake over and pressed it into the board. This created a seal for the cake and held it firstly to the board. Once it was in place any air holes were filled with pieces of marzipan, I didn't have any so this wasn't necessary, and then the cake was coated with one piece around 5mm thick. The cake was then left to dry for a week. 

The following week we coated our cakes in sugarpaste. I decided to coat mine in a pale blue icing so coloured it slightly, rolled it to the correct size and stuck it on top. We used vodka to stick the icing on top of the marzipan, this is partly because it's sticky but it's also sterile and preservative. 

Iced Cake

By adding a small amount of water to the sugar paste we could create some piping icing and using this we could create an edge to the cake using a star nozzle. 

Piping around the edge

For the topping of the cake I used 2 patchwork cutters. The first was a snow drop cutter. 

Patchwork Cutter

This created flowers in several layers. The first was plain white. 

White layer for the bottom

Then I needed several layers of green to stick on top in various places. I cut out whole flowers but I only used part of these. 

Here you can see that I've cut off the flowers and just left the stems and leave. 

Green bottom layer

I wanted several layers of leaves so here are those cut out. 

Cutting out the green layers

Once the pieces are all cut out it's assembled and layered up. I made 3 layers of the flowers and so the whole effect was 3D. 

Finished flower

You can see that here. 

Side 3D view

I made several flowers for the top of the cake. 

Several Snow drops

Using the same idea I created a 3D robin. Once all the pieces were ready I made some snow by using some white royal icing and dabbing it on the top. Also using the royal icing I stuck the items on the top. 

Top View with the objects stuck on

Finally for the edges I made some plaques using an oval cutter and a smaller snowdrop stamp. I just marked it out on the icing, these were too small and fiddly to cut out just the flower. I then painted these so they were slightly green. 

Oval Plaques

This is the finished cake. 

Top View, Finished Cake

Side View, finished cake

Overall I thought the cake looked good and tasted nice. I could have done with smaller oval cutters for the plaques on the side as these were too large and had to be cut off. I am still not sure whether I like them either, I only made them because my course tutor insisted. The effect of the top was good and I liked how the cake looked. It's a fairly simple but effective idea. Next year I'll probably use some of the techniques I learnt this year on my cake(s) but will have to come up with some different designs. I'll probably end up making several cakes for various different gatherings. 

If you need a cake for any occasion, including Christmas, please get in touch and I'd be delighted to see what I can create for you.