The icing on the cake

So, after you’ve patiently waited the best part of 3 months, religiously feeding every two weeks with your favourite tipple – ours is brandy – you’ll want to give the Christmas cakes their final icing.

I have had a few goes at icing cakes over the years and have tried making my own marzipan and royal icing.  However, the best results I’ve had are with pre-rolled sheets of marzipan and royal icing from Lakeland.  It takes all the hassle out of it, especially when you’ve normally left it a little late to get the dressed for the special day and time is not your friend!

So here is a step-by-step of what I did last year, which worked really well.

First start with melting about half a pot of apricot jam, you want to go with apricot as it has a subtle flavour and as this is to help the marzipan stick, you don’t want it overpowering the cake itself.  It shouldn’t take any more than 5 minutes.

Once you’ve got the jam into a liquid, you want to take the mixture and apply liberally to the outside of the cake(s), ready for the marzipan undercoating.

Once the jam is spread all over, you can then place your marzipan over the cake and ensure it has got a good coverage.

You can then move onto the icing, which is as simple as the last step, but much more important as you want to make sure the final finish looks clean and without blemishes.

Look at the concentration! (wine not optional)

Nicely finished…

Once the icing is complete, you can then decorate as you see fit.  The first ever time I did it, Sarah and Angus found it hilarious that they ate all the heads off the snowmen, sufficed to say, that didn’t happen again after 3 months worth of work!