'Designer' Christmas cakes - inspire me

[stealthsquiggle]

Last year I made (with help from DS) little (4" square) Christmas cakes as presents for teachers, nursery carers, etc - they went down a storm and were a lot cheaper than buying presents for them all. So I thought I would do them again this year but I need a 'theme' for decorating.

Last year they were plain white with a ribbon tied around them and a figure on top of each (Santa/Rudolph/Angel/Snowman) which I made.

Has anyone seen any beautiful expensive cakes that I can copy, please?

What about the snowflakes like the one on my profile (but smaller obviously)

I am too tight broke to buy Nigella's Christmas book (it's on my wishlist!)

CoV are the snowflakes cut out, stencilled or both? I could probably stretch to a snowflake stencil (I do have some snowflake cutters but I think they would be too big and solid)

Thanks for the idea, BTW, Butterfly - I will spend some quality time 'browsing' in a book shop tomorrow, I think

Last year's efforts on my profile now.

I did one a couple of years ago that was really nice and easy - don;t have photo though. Essentially I had plain white icing on and rolled out green icing and cut out a Xmas tree shape with a cutter and put that on the cake and then put some of those sparkly little balls on and wrapped aroudn the cake with plain red ribbon. Effective and simple.

wow cov, fantastic cakes! really like them!

what about little stars - buy a small cutter, can do white on white or just glitter/dust the stars silver or gold, and add a silver or gold ribbon too? nice idea btw, I might pinch it!

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I think the little cakes idea is fantastic. I am also interested in how you did it - in terms of cooking time, what tins you used etc.

Don't tempt me Butterfly

As for how, I have one of these so I scaled up a Nigella recipe to make a 12" square cake, but baked it as 9 * 4" square cakes. DS helped with that bit, and then he drew pictures which I used to cover the cake boards as his contribution to the 'personalisation' (cake board, picture, and then shrink wrap to protect picture and cake from each other)

I was thinking that I could do little stars standing up like CoV's snowflakes - or little letters (Thankyou?)

Things to ponder - we had better get on and bake the cakes, I guess!

how about little ones of this if you made a huge square cake and cut it into triangles for icing it could look spectacular

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I am very impressed stealth.

Blunt - yes but not right now. It was from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book, IIRC.

I nhave just done all the fun Christmas shopping (for children) and stuck to my (reduced from last year) budget. That 'just' leaves me presents for adults who don't need things and won't appreciate them anyway (also with reduced budget)

[sigh] I shall be making cakes tomorrow to cheer myself up, I think - in which case I will post the recipe then!

Love your idea, buda, where can I get christmas cutters?
I've got 5 of the bloody things to ice, 4 of which are gifts. I've given them before, but I need some inspiration now as to what to put on them.

That didn't make sense! What I meant was that I've given cakes as gifts other years to the same people, and now I need inspiration to make them look a little different this year.

(the people in question like cakes, by the way!!!)

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Thanks ladymariner - can't remember where I got mine I'm afraid. I think I just bought them in a supermarket here in Budapest. They are just cookie cutters in Xmas shapes. I have a basic set and I got a set that has 3 sizes of Xmas trees I think.

OK, Blunt - I haven't made cakes today (predictably) - in fact I haven't even got all the ingredients [sigh] but here goes:

For a 350g cake (25.5cm round or 23cm square tin)(I used twice this to make a 12" square divided into 9 4" cakes):

1kg sultanas
350g raisins
175g currants (I think I just used more raisins because I don't like currants)
175g glace cherries
175g mixed peel (I subbed something else - see note on currants!)
180ml Brandy or Sherry
1.5 tsp orange zest, grated
1.5 tsp lemon zest, grated
6 large eggs
3 tablespoons marmalade
525g plain flour
1.5 tsps mixed spice
.25 tsp cinnamon
.25 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp almond essence
.25 tsp salt

soak fruit overnight in brandy/sherry
preheat oven to 150 deg C. Line tin with double thickness brown paper, then again with baking parchment, both to come a good 10cm above the rim of the tin.

Cream butter and sugar, beat in orange and lemon zest. Add eggs one at a time, beating well between each, then marmalade. Sift dry ingredients together, then mix fruit alternately with dry ingredients into the creamed mixture. Add almond essence, combine thoroughly.

Bake until cake tester comes out clean (recipe says 4 - 4.5 hours for this size, reducing temp to 140 after an hour).

Remove from oven, immediately brush with a couple of tablespoons of extra booze, wrap in double layer of foil (softens top of cake as it cools). Once completely cold remove the cake from the tin and re-wrap in foil until it is decorated (she says 3 weeks, ours got 1 week last time!)

HTH

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While you are there get a mini baking parchment roll - it is exactly the right width for lining that tin, and some extra dividers if you want to make 9 at a time.

I used single layer of baking parchment round the inside of each segment of the tin (held in place with paper clips until the mixture goes in) and then put brown paper round the outside of the whole thing - it worked fine.

After 4 hours baking there is no alcohol left in the cake - I would just leave out the brushing it with brandy when it comes out of the oven (TBH I am not sure I did that anyway as I had used all of the marsala (no brandy in the house) to try and revive the Tesco value dried fruit )

oh and baking time - I can't remember but I don't think it was as long as 4 hours - the dividers make cakes cook more quickly.

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How about a small version of this?