Bugger I've left it late

[cheshirecatssmile]

Google has let me down

I've marzipan my cakes. It's dry and set. I'm using ready made fondant icing.
How soon can I decorate, I have other fondant decorations and edible glue.
Getting myself in a twist as I have 3 cakes to do.
One cake is a gift so want to get it right

Oh, and I always copy my design from a picture online! I'm not good at thinking it up myself. This year's was copied from this one....

I made my cake early December and gave it another feed with Amarretto last Friday .
I;m doing the marzipan sometime this week , normally use the Delia one but online it has a recipe to heat the eggs and sugar over a bain marie , which isn't the one I usually do .

I found a recipe though , I usually do the marzipan then icing the next day .
Love the photos of the cakes , mine will be lucky to get white icing and some piped rossettes !

If you have made your own marzipan, how long do you need to leave the cake before icing?

Yours is better. You’re incredibly talented.

I am royal icing mine tomorrow after marzipaning it on thursday. I love royal icing though it just gets peaked into a snow scene with silver balls on and is nothing like these v professional looking efforts.

Thanks!

Just to set the scene properly, though - you didn't see the year I left the cake iced but uncovered and it got a coating of plaster dust from some decorating. It was a vague grey colour and I didn't have the heart to try and make anything nice on it so served everyone a dirty grey cake and told them not to eat the icing

p.s. @flapjackfairy my Grandma always uses Icing peaks-as-snow and I think it always looks perfectly wonderful!

Very Christmassy.

Love this thread! Go for it OP, you're an inspiration. I wouldn't even be attempting to make my own Xmas cake, brilliantly my MIL is in the WI and makes her own (also award winning lemon-curd & her own marmalade). Barely lift a finger at MILs save a bit of washing up; have to help at my folk's as mum struggles...so DH & I help with the food quite a lot (DH was a chef when we were young so its fine), my dad does all the washing up (he's a neat freak)!! Obviously at some point bubble will burst (already has slightly as they do slimming world & no sugar these days) & I'll have to step up, but for now I'm enjoying the respite til my 7 year old gets older. PIL have only one grandchild (our DS), my folks have 6.

Finished the touches to cake 1. Edible glitter on the star on cake 2.
Started cake 3. This one is mine.

I usually leave Marzipan for about 48 hours but it's no big deal. These are some very lovely cakes, well done everyone!

Cake 3
I've had queries about cakes next year. God help me

Gorgeous cakes OP, I am very impressed!!

I am still to decorate mine (have marzipanned) but might go for something like @WhaleInAManger's. How did you make those robins??

I love your tree cake OP!

The robins:

• made a round ball of brown icing and pinched a tail into it.
• made a small round ball for the face and blobbed it on to the bigger ball with edible glue
• made a tiny orange cone for the beak and glued it on
• made a larger red cone for the hat then trimmed with white icing and glued that on
• cut out little wing shapes and used a knife to impress little cuts to look like 'v' to represent feathers; glued them on
• glued the whole thing onto half a flake for the branch
• ate the other half of the flake

Oh! Forgot a stage in the middle where I cut small circles of white and red icing to make the red breasts.

Close up...

Thanks so much, I'm going to give that a go if I can find brown colouring

I bought the icing precoloured (renshaw).

I've got my hands on red and green icing so think I will try mixing it to make brown

Yea use renshaws icing. A lot better quality. For the 2nd tree cake I used Sainsbury's own coloured icing and it's crap. It ripped and was so sticky. It's dried now but wasn't impressed.
Only used that as sold out of the good stuff

You don't need to wait for marzipan to dry before putting fondant on. Just do it.

I’ve been lurking on this thread as I used to love baking and hoping to get back into it.
Really impressed with the cakes people have shared, they look amazing!
@cheshirecatssmile where did you get the wee edible baubles for the tree cake? I quite fancy trying this one.

@WishIhadacrystalball
These are what I used. Got mine from Sainsbury's