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| Christmas Cake for presents |
Having become addicted to 'Ace of Cakes', I decided it was time to learn, if not how to spray paint a cake and make it look like a flamingo or the Taj Mahal, at least cover a cake with icing and some simple decorations. For that reason, I decided to join a cake decorating course at my local college, and have spent the last 8 weeks learning so much. To test how much I have learnt I even borrowed a book from the library in my half term to read and see how much I understood - and I can honestly say that at the beginning of the course I would have felt like Alice in Wonderland upon opening the book, but after just 4 weeks of my course I understood the majority of the techniques and had at least an inkling of how to carry them out. The course finished just in time for Christmas, and I decided in order to practice and reinforce some of the skills I had learnt I would make and decorate Christmas cakes for my Foodie colleagues and give them as gifts.
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| Making Nigella's Christmas cakes |
I decided to make the majority of the cakes from a Nigella recipe, as I thought it would be more gooey than traditional Christmas Cake and that the combination of fruit, chocolate and Tia Maria would be enjoyable... and it was! Mr BB seemed to love it as several disappeared rather quickly from the cooling rack. If you want to try it follow the link below - it is a good last minute recipe as it does not need time to mature - and nor does it need to be covered in marzipan and icing, although I covered them to make them sweeter (and neater) presents.
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| Nigella's Chocolate Fruit Cake |
Since I wanted to make my main Christmas Cake with Kirstie Allsopp's recipe, I also decided to take this oppurtunity to test it by making several minature cakes with that recipe as well, and they turned out very nicely. And for those who really can't stomach fruit cake, I purchased madeira cake (I just didn't have the time to make it unfortunately), covered it with vanilla frosting, and decorated it.
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From left to right - Kirstie's Christmas cake, shop bought Madeira, and
Nigella's Chocolate Christmas cake |
During my course I made some poinsetta's and Christmas roses, which adorned the tops of some of the cakes, and then used my minature Christmas tree cutters on alternate green or white icing for the rest of the fruit cakes. On the maderia cakes I made snowflakes in a variety of sizes with snowflake patchwork cutters. A dusting of edible glitter on the top of all of the cakes finished them off, and they were then wrapped in white issue paper and tied with red ribbon, ready to gift. I was really happy with how they turned out, and better yet I was able to practise my newly learned skills. I think from the texts I recieved that the recipients were happy as well x
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