…and now for the Icing on the Fruit Cake

Good enough to eat

This simple Poinsettia design looks lovely and is not difficult.  You will need some holly cutters which should be easily available from any decent cook shop.  The one’s I used had a veining stamp which makes the leaves look a bit more realistic.  Getting royal icing absolutely flat is a skill which has to be learned like any other, and for this cake isn’t necessary.  A few swift strokes with a wet palette knife are quite sufficient as long as you can get it to follow the line of the cake, as the top will be covered with leaves and the sides with a ribbon. 

You need to leave the royal icing to dry on your cake at least over night, so put the icing on, then make the leaves, then leave the both to dry.  The leaves can then be applied the following day.

Utensils:
1 x large mixing bowl
1 x electric hand mixer
1 palette knife
1 x jug of warm water
2 x holly cutters – 1″ & 1 ½”, ideally with a veining stamp
1 x rolling pin
paint brushes
greaseproof paper

Ingredients:
1 x marzipanned cake
1 x pack royal icing mix
Icing sugar for dusting
1 x pack of ready made red fondant icing
1 x pack of ready made green fondant icing
a tiny bit of cream or white fondant or some mimosa balls for stamens
1 x pot edible glue
1 x pot edible glitter – disco neon electric lime (or similar)
1 x pot edible glitter – disco red
1 length of ribbon

Method:
Make up the royal icing as per the instructions on the pack.  It is important to beat the icing for the prescribed length of time; use an electric mixer or your arm will drop off if you attempt to do it by hand.  And we wouldn’t want that would we?

Using a palette knife, apply the icing to the cake in confident strokes.  Dip the knife into a jug of warm water and it will spread much more evenly.  Make sure that every bit of marzipan is covered and I would recommend a thickness of about 1cm of icing.
Wipe any splodges of icing off the cake board with a damp cloth
Lightly cover your work surface with icing sugar
Roll out about 1/3 of the green icing to a thickness of about 1/8″ / 2mm
Dip the cutter lightly in some icing sugar and proceed to cut out about 20 large leaves and 6 small leaves of each colour
Lay them out on the greaseproof paper
Working on 3-4 at a time, paint each leaf with sugar glue
Using a separate brush, immediately dust each painted leaf with glitter of the same colour
Leave to dry overnight.  Remember to rinse out your brushes.

Paint some sugar glue onto the back of a green leaf and place on the outside edge of the cake, pressing gently into place, then work your way round the edge, placing them at slightly different angles

Apply another layer, slightly further in and overlapping a bit (see photo)
Then do the same with the red leaves, finishing with a few little ones in the middle
Put a few tiny balls of white/cream fondant in the middle to look like stamens
Leave to dry

Finish off the cake with a nice, broad ribbon and glue it in place at the back.  I have just used plain ribbon but you could add a jolly bow.
Place in an obvious place so that everyone who comes to your house can completely unexpectedly admire it

Being Awfully Busy

I’ve kept meaning to put another post on this week, but somehow it just hasn’t happened.  I have two children at different schools and every day there seems to be something else that I either have to do, attend, contribute or pay for; Class Hamper, Secret Santa, Christingle, Carol Service, Own Clothes Day, Decorations Day, Nativity Play, Create A New Organised Religion Day (Key Stage 1), Release a Turkey into The Wild Morning and my personal favourite, Camel Care for the Under Fives.   I also now have choir practices and carol services to go to and I have to make the house habitable in order to be hospitable over the Christmas Season.  Can’t wait for the end of term!

This weekend, I am going to marzipan my Christmas Cakes, so look out for a piece on that, which will be closely followed by instruction on how to do a simple but effective Poinsettia design for the icing.

Tonight, it is Alice’s daughter’s birthday and we are all going to see ‘Nativity’ at the pictures.  Alice and I usually go to the pub while the children are watching some hideous, badly executed, poorly plotted cartoon, and we had found that cinema attendance had become a very expensive sleep – Alice actually snored during ‘Monsters v. Aliens’.  But tonight we are going to ‘sit in’.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Tomorrow, having been lent a set of brushes, I am going to clean my chimney.  I’ve been awfully good this year…