My Christmas cake

 Hi

Just finished this year's Christmas cake and I am pleased with how it looks 

I used a Mary Berry fruit cake recipe which you can find on below link

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/classic_christmas_cake_04076

It made this large 8 inch cake plus 4 small mini ones baked in a muffin tin.  It was a good idea to make the mini ones as i was able to try the fruit cake before decorating to make sure it tasted nice. It did not disappoint on taste and was very moist and you could taste the brandy !!!!!! I will defiantly use this recipe again next year. 

I kept the cakes wrapped in the baking paper and in the tin for 3 weeks in an airtight container . Every week i poured a tbsp of brandy over them  to keep them moist

I used ready made yellow marzipan to cover them which I did a week before the icing. 

I decided to decorate with a simple Frozen theme. I brought some different sizes of snowflake fondant stamps and made lots of light blue and white ones out of fondant icing in different sizes and shapes. 

Some of them I brushed with glitter and I painted a few with edible silver paint. Then I left for a week to dry out and harden . I also crushed some clear mints and melted them in oven to create the ice shards . It took me 3 attempts to make these as I let them get too hot in oven and boil which caused lots of air bubbles . 

Once all decorations were made i  covered the cake in Royal icing which i made using egg whites and icing sugar with tsp Glucose and lemon juice. This stops the icing from going rock hard. 

I coved the cakes and and made peaks to look like snow rather than a smooth surface which is harder to do. I then carefully placed the decorations on top and on the sides in a random pattern 

I will gift two mini cakes and put them in a small cellophane bag tired with a ribbon. The other one I will cut and share with hubby to make sure it tastes OK before giving out .