The Women’s Room Christmas cake: ready to ice!

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For those of you making the Christmas cake, we are ready to ice!

 

You may have your own preferred Christmas ritual for decorating your cake. Some families have plastic snowmen and Santa figures which are carefully stored away to use every year. Here at the Women’s Room we’ve long since lost ours and also view icing the cake as an excitingly anticipated creative ‘moment’, when we can really have fun.

 

This year we’ve made a forest of icing trees, which again we first saw on-line at Waitrose recipe finder. It’s very easy but looks spectacularly effective, everyone will be calling you Martha Stewart. (see Happy Thanksgiving post)

 

You will need:

3 tablespoons apricot jam (or sieved marmalade)

750g pack of golden marzipan

2 egg whites

400g icing sugar, sieved

1 pack of Regalice ready-to-roll icing

Assorted cutters, writing icing and food dyes, depending on what you want you final forest of trees to look like.

 

Unwrap your cake and make the (nicely flat) base of the cake the top. Warm the jam or marmalade and sieve; brush a thick layer over the cake. Roll out the marzipan and cover the cake, making sure you have a good finish at the bottom –no gaps please.

 

Mix the egg white with the sieved icing sugar until you have a slow moving, drip-able consistency you can spoon onto the top of the cake and drip artistically down the sides.

Now roll out your ready-to-roll icing until it is the thickness of two stacked pound coins.

 

Cut out Christmas tree shapes with cutters and allow them to dry and harden slightly. Paint your own designs on the trees and when ready, stick the trees onto the iced cake with a blob of remaining icing. Build your forest as you wish and maybe add a few trees around the side. It's best not to make the trees too tall or there will be cries of "Timber!" as they topple. We built a snowman out of the spare scraps and found a woodland lodge decoration rattling about the cutlerly drawer, as you do.

 

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For supplies of cake decorations and superior food colourings we love the Squires Group website which is full of good ideas and quality products. Careful though, it's addictive.

 

Merry Christmas all! Let us know how you decorated your cakes so we can store the ideas for next Christmas

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