Wednesday 25 March 2015

Christmas Cakes 2014

It's almost Easter, so in the race to get these blog posts from December and January written up before Springtime crafting and baking begins, it means that Christmas posts have to be shared, even if it is the end of March!

 
Using the same traditional fruit cake recipe that was originally my Mum's, but now with a couple of my own little tweaks to it, I started this baking at the beginning of November.  After soaking the fruit in sherry for a few days first, it was baking day and this time I had my baby girl helping me!
 
 
 
 
 
Cakes all baked, stored and soaked in sherry a few times over 6 weeks it was decorating day!
 

 
 
 
Apricot glaze, marzipan and then fondant layers, and white fondant decoration pieces cut out using mini cookie cutters and winter linzer cookie cutter shapes to create a fair isle design.
 
In thinking about this year's Christmas cake designs I knew I wanted to create something Nordic, and my favourite pattern and Christmas theme of the season was definitely fair isle.  Everything seemed to be fair isle and Nordic this past year.  Lots of clothing, home décor and paper crafts all in this design - so I went with this inspiration for my cakes and was so happy with how it turned out.  I was excited to have appropriate shapes in mini cookie cutters, and especially loved the two little squirrels, the little houses and also the ice skates!  I used Wilton's fondant extruder to make the various dividing lines between the small fondant pieces.  SO HAPPY with how it all turned out :-D
 
The cakes were finished just the day before we headed to England for Christmas week, and with a nice layer of snow in the back garden I pulled on my snow boots and headed out in -12°C to do a Christmas cake photo shoot in the snow!!  A little crazy for sure... I don't know if any neighbours saw me but oh well :-S!
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
After sticking around for a long, long time - the snow has finally almost all melted so with this blog post written, and the grass visible again it's time to look to Spring and everything crafty and foody that will bring.  It's getting closer :-D

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