Christmas cake - December 2012

I really have been bad at blogging lately - I even forgot to post about how I adapted the top layer of our wedding cake for Christmas.

You may recognise me from a larger cake....

The hearts are the same, the ribbon is new!

All I did was change the ribbon and add a decoration to the top as I was quite busy before Christmas. The three months had made the cake mature nicely though, so it was very tasty!
Here's what it looked like before:

Wedding cake flower spray - 8/9/11

So, in my previous post, I described the individual flowers I put in my wedding cake spray.
Before I'd started making them, I'd done some sketches to work out what I needed and how big the flowers should be.
So once I'd made up the stems of flowers, I had to make a cake-shaped box to help me arrange the spray properly. This was made up of various boxes and a block of oasis to stick the flower pick into (I'd got two big posy picks as well as some smaller picks, so that I could have a set for the cake and a set to transport the flowers with).

Then to arrange the flowers. I had two single calla lilies, two stems of lisianthus with leaves, two stems of freesias and five stems of spray carnations with rose leaves.

In the end, I only needed three stems of carnations so the other two went on top of the cake, the spray going from the bottom layer up the sides.
The final spray looked like this:

Yes, that is an icing sugar box posing as a cake!

And here is a photo my friend took of the cake all assembled and ready for eating:

Tasty tasty cake!

You can probably see that the main posy is actually in three separate picks because the lisianthus stems were too big to fit in with the rest of the flowers. What you can't see is where the icing cracked on one side because the picks were too close to the edge of the cake...

This cake is two layers of fruit and one layer of madeira, each layer is on a thick board (the middle madeira layer is actually on two boards as it was shorter than the fruit cakes!), with ribbon around the edge of each cake & board. The lower cakes have dowels in to support the upper layers. The top layer has pink hearts inlaid into the sugarpaste as well as the flowers.

Cake iced with home made icing - 3/6/11

So, after I'd made my icing from scratch, I attempted to decorate the cake with it. I had quite a lot of problems rolling out the icing, I'm not sure whether that was because it was different icing, or because I was trying to roll out a bigger piece (this cake is 8 inches square, and before I'd only done 6 inch square cakes). It was also a hot day which i think made the icing stickier.
In the end, with the aid of some margarine on the surface instead of icing sugar, it got rolled out and attached to the cake. I was using some of the flowers I'd made a while ago for decorations, as well as a wide ribbon around the sides.

There are a few crumbs in the icing, as the marzipan was only on the top of the cake not the sides.

It was supposed to be an anniversary cake for our visitors, although their anniversary is actually the 2nd of June not the 3rd. As I ran out of time to make new decorations, it ended up being a bit of a random cake. But it tastes good!

View from the front of the cake

Cake from the back. The ribbon is hiding the messy sides of the cake!

There is still about a quarter of the cake left in my kitchen. It tastes good but is quite crumbly when you cut it.

Another bigger cake, 26/3/11

I haven't done any cakes for a while as i've been busy with other things, but this cake is one I made a while ago (see this post) and froze. It had a day or so to defrost, then I marzipanned it and iced it:

Front view

Rear view showing the join in the ribbon

Experimenting with inlaying and non-purple colours and shapes for a change!
This is a six inch square fruit cake with marzipan and sugarpaste icing to decorate it and a ribbon round the sides.

Icing bigger cake - 5/3/11

I've iced one of the cakes which I baked the other day. Last night I covered it with marzipan.

Six inch square cake covered in marzipan.
This is a smoother base for the icing.

The calla lilies which I made a while ago have been repainted as well.

Before: the colour of the petals is not very bright.

After: Stems painted green, stamens yellow.
Petals gone over with purple to deepen the colour.

This morning I covered the marzipan with white sugarpaste and added other decorations.

Callas are supported by small blobs of sugarpaste. Star is inlaid into the surface.

Back of the cake has two hearts,
the sides have flowers and leaves.

Front of the cake has flower and hearts.
All the small decorations are attached on top of the white not inaid.

This cake is probably a bit too busy, but I was slightly overexcited as I have lots of new cutters and colours to play with!