Icing the Christmas Cake

[SugarHut]

The cake is made...have been feeding with alcohol as I should...however I forget every year:

When is it ok to marzipan and ice it? A couple of days before? Or can I do it a lot more in advance?

You are much more organised than me, I haven't made my cake yet. When I do get round to it it'll be a light one that doesn't need much time to mature.

If I was organised I'd do the marzipan a week before Christmas and the royal icing a couple of days later, to give it time to dry.

I'll probably end up icing mine on Christmas eve as usual!

I normally have really good ideas about icing the cake in advance and it is always a rush job on Christmas Eve. I shouldn't make any plans to do it in advance, just plan to do it on Christmas Eve and be done with it. It's kind of a tradition already for me to be rushing to get it done before church in the afternoon. In an ideal world I would probably do it next weekend I guess.

I marzipanned mine today , will ice it on Tuesday or Wednesday , and we will start eating it on next Sunday (15th )
We start it early , as there's so much to eat on Christmas Day , it seems a waste to start a cake then .
Sometimes if I'm very organised we start eating the Christmas cake on the first Sunday in December

I am usually a bit disorganised, so I marzipan and ice the cake on the same day - I use a fairly thick layer of royal icing, and have never had any problems doing this.

Mine is a bowl of soaking fruit

Tends to get get decorated between Xmas and new year and eaten on years day.

Sort if happened by accident one disorganised year and it's become a post Xmas way of entertaining DDs.

Actually, I'd like to do my own cake, but I'm not allowed.