JOANNA'S FOOD: family cooking, from scratch, every day


Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Extra fruity Christmas Cake


















I recently found myself promising to make a Christmas cake for the raffle at the cricket dinner. Fine, I'm good at making fruit cake (if I say so myself). But not so good at decorating them. So I took the easy way out, and studded it with almonds, as if it was a Dundee cake.


















This is the extra fruity Christmas cake I made last year, after lots of help from readers. I made two. I'll make marzipan for ours - it's a doddle, and much much nicer than anything you can buy. In fact, if I didn't have time to make a cake, I'd buy one and STILL make the marzipan, it's that good.

Icing? Well, I aim to crack that this year ... in the past, I've either bought very nasty ready-rolled, or made rough icing that slid down the cake, onto the plate and off onto the worktop. Can anyone give me any good tips on making Christmas cake icing?


Links to related posts

Boiled fruitcake my mother-in-law's foolproof and delicious recipe
Pistachio marzipan


4 comments:

Cabbage Tree Farm said...

That cake looks pretty good. I've never tried to make icing, other than soft icing with cream cheese. Thanks for the marzipan recipe too. My mother always made her own (as well as the icing, guess I should get her recipes) and it was delicious, shop bought just doesn't compare.
We have been given a Xmas cake each year for a while by a relative so I don't normally get the chance to make my own.

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

Wow.
I mean really WOW!
Beautiful!

behind the ivy said...

That cake looks really lovely!

I used to just top my cakes with almonds and glace cherries but I started to use a Delia recipe for royal icing and it works for me! I just splodge it all on and peak it up but I only ice the top, partly because I'm lazy and partly because I think that icing the whole thing is too sweet.

I'm definitely going to try out your marzipan recipe, I've been meaning to make my own for years!

Anonymous said...

Wow, beautiful, Joanna! Respect.