Where are all you cakey folk? Shall we have another christmas cake thread?

[Olihan]

I liked stealing sharing ideas and tips last year, shall we do it again?

I have a few here

midori wrt to the timings of marzipan and icing as you are using the roll out fondant (aka sugar paste) then you can do it all in the one go.

You put a very thin layer of heated up apricot jam on the cake (scrape on scrape off - you don't want jam oozing out under the cake) and then put the marzipan on. When you've done that you can wet the surface of the marzipan straight off with alcohol. I tend to use vodka or sometimes brandy. I use my fingers to do this. Then you can roll out the icing, roll it onto your rolling pin and then sort of un roll it onto the cake.

Have you got a book? this one is excellent

A very useful bit of kit is a smoother that you rub over the top of the marzipan and then the paste to level out any bumps.

A covered fruit cake will keep for ages and it shouldn't crack. The icing will dry out and harden, just keep it in a cardboard (not airtight) box and definately NOT in the fridge (or the garage if yours is as cold as mine) as the icing sweats if it gets too cold.

hth

Olihan is the proper expert on this. i'm just a keen amateur.

lol at your list of needs . Welcome to the dark side where money spent on tiny bits of plastic just goes poooof.

Thankyou, that is really helpful.

I've got a smoother, I think it's that one actually. I've covered sponge cakes with fondant before, just not fruit cakes, although I've done a Royal Iced one. It'll be easier if I can do the marzipan and fondant all in one go I think. I was wondering if I needed apricot jam to stick the fondant to the marzipan, so the fact I don't is good to know. Thankyou.

I don't have any books, but I'm on the lookout for one, so I'll putt hat one on my Christmas list, thankyou. I'm a bit rubbish really, but hopefully if I practice I'll improve. I have taught myself everything so far, but am hoping to maybe do a course or few when we move back to the mainland next year and there are loads of ideas on here.

The book Slubber linked to is BRILLIANT, has all the recipes for every size and gluten/egg/dairy-free combo for both sponge and fruit cakes. It also has masses of instructions on modelling/RI/stacking tiered cakes, etc. It's invaluable and I recommend it to everyone who's beginning cake decorating!

The only slight criticism I have is that the sponge cake quantities are a bit over-generous but I tend to make any extra into fairy cakes for me to eat while I'm on my own the DCs.

My essential piece of kit in addition to what Slubber has suggested is a small non-stick rolling pin and board for doing all the fiddly cutter work.

Feel free to nick any of the ideas, I've adapted a fair few of them from ones I've seen other people do anyway .

Teaching yourself is the best way to start imo, I did (my first ever attempt at a cake is on my profile here I think), then enrolled for an evening class to get me away from 3 small dcs and that was great for learning new techniques like royal icing or different ways of doing things. Basically, the more you make, the more quickly you improve so everyone I knew got a cake for the flimsiest reason at the beginning .

Thankyou. My DH is ordering the book mentioned for me this evening. (I can't get in with Amazon.

I have a few cakes to do over the next few weeks. Will be a couple of Christmas ones, friend's chocolate birthday cake and my DS's birthday cake. So, I can get some practice and post some photos and it should be good for a laugh at least.

I was thinking of piling up sugared almonds on to my cake, which will be marzipan and iced but I can't work out how to stop them from rolling off?

I think you'd have to use royal icing to stick a 'wall' of them round the edge of the cake then pile the rest inside that.

oh gosh - I might have to rethink things, I just fancied a pile in the middle.

I've not got a clue why its even important to me! important thing is that it tastes good!

thank you for the suggestion :)

You could use excess sugarpaste mixed with a few drops of water rather than royal icing but I can't think of another way of stopping the whole lot cascading off as soon as you move it or even just look at it .

I might have to buy some to experiment with. dh is going to think I've lost the plot when I sart making sugared almond sculptures

Or you could carve out a little well in the top of your cake.

I think I might stop trying to be so poncey and just stick a snowman on top

OK, two cakes made. One Christmas, one chocolate birthday cake.

I did notice the icing cracked slightly at the edges on the Christmas one. Did I roll the icing too thin/thick, or is this just something that happens? I definitely kneeded enough as colouring the icing blue took forever...

The Christmas one (shamefully copied from Olihan ) isn't quite dy, hence some odd looking patches on the icing.

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/45c4e24a.jpg

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/8108235b.jpg

I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

Gah.

Links:

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/45c4e24a.jpg

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/8108235b.jpg

Ooh, Midori, it looks fab . I love that design because it is so effective but is actually very simple.

How did you get on with using the cigarellos? I've never used them but love the look they give (getting to eat the spares would be an added bonus too!).

Icing cracking could be: icing had cooled down too much before you rolled it out, it may have dried out slightly as you coloured it (lots of kneading and blue being quite a 'dry' paste) or the rolled out paste could have been too big so the weight of the sides pulled it down too much.

I find that smoothing the top as soon as I've laid it on, then rubbing the heel/palm of my hand in a circular motion around the top edge stops it cracking.

Thankyou. I think the icing might have been rolled out too big then. It was just on the corners/edges IFSWIM? It wasn't that obvious, but because I knew it was there I couldn't stop noticing it.

The chocolate cigarellos were really easy to use. Not especially fragile or anything. I'll order them online next time though, as our local place charged £35 for them!!!

I find that the 'drag' as the sides of a really big sheet of icing drop over the cake will crack the edges even if it's very pliable. I don't know whether it's the weight or the extra fiddling about needed to smooth the sides but mine definitely cracks more when I've rolled it out too big.

£35 for cigarellos? May have to investigate online suppliers, that's extortionate!

Thankyou. I do still find covering a cake with fondant quite tricky, just need more practice.

Yes, £35 is extortionate, but there aren't many sugarcraft suppliers near us (and this one is an hour away). They seem about £25 ish a box online, not sure if they can be found cheaper, didn't really look as was worried about them being broken when they arrived, but I don't think I really needed to have been. Mind you, have been quoted £20 for delivery to NI, so it might not be worth ordering online for me unless in bulk.

wow midori they are AMAZING.

I am so doing that reindeer and star cake in blue or purple next year

We had a demo of making a cigarello cake a few years ago in one of my cake decorating classes. I remember thinking 'wow that looks so pretty and professional;' until the teacher told us how much the cigarellos cost, hence I've never made one.

OK, I am off to bake 12 mini Christmas cakes (, I know, should have been weeks ago, but this recipe doesn't need to mature, honest!)

They will be lucky to get cold before they are iced as they need to be presented to teachers on Friday [eeek]

night sky and landscape had better be really easy....