So you’ve soaked the fruit, made the cake and been feeding it up for months and it is time to ice that boozy slab of yumminess.
What you’ll need: (to ice a 10 inch square cake or equivalent)
- 1 baked and fed Christmas cake (I made mine with 1.5 times the cake mixture, see recipe)
- ~5 tbsp of apricot jam
- Icing sugar, to dust (vital!)
- ~1 kg (perhaps less) of fondant icing, the colour of your choice
- ~500g, more or less depending on desired thickness, of marzipan
- A rolling pin
- A pastry brush
- Coloured fondant icing and edible glue, if decorating further
What to do:
- Place your cake on a cake board:
- Dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out your marzipan until 3-5 mm thick and with a surface area larger than the cake:
- Heat the jam in a bowl and the brush onto the top and sides of the cake with a pastry brush. Dust with icing sugar and then roll the marzipan around the rolling pin. Do this placing the rolling pin above the left hand side of the marzipan and gently lifting the edge of the marzipan over the rolling pin. Gently twist the rolling pin to loosely curl the marzipan around the rolling pin, until 3 inches or so remain. Lift the rolling pin with marzipan over the the right hand side of the cake and gently uncurl the marzipan onto the cake. Make sure you leave enough draped over the sides to cover the entire cake:
- Gently smooth down the marzipan on the top and sides of the cake, leave the corners a little ‘baggy’. Trim the marzipan around the sides of the cake with a sharp knife but leave the corners as they are:
- Trim the corners. I do this by slicing down the middle of the envelope of marzipan and removing one half:
Then I fold the remaining half in and gently smooth it down:
I make sure it is much smoother than this on the fondant layer. - Coat the marzipan in apricot jam and sprinkle with icing sugar:
- Repeat steps 2-5 with the fondant. It helps if the fondant is a little thicker, to get a smooth finish and keep your work surface well dusted.
Voila, your cake is iced! Here are some of the cakes I’ve decorated this year, it is the first time I’ve ever really done the decorating thing and the edible glue hasn’t dried yet in the pictures:
(Filthy animals cake courtesy of James)
Noisette 