Tiny fruit cakes

You may have seen my earlier Tiny Christmas Cakes post, well they're all decorated and ready for eating on Sunday.

There's such a variety of ways to decorate a Christmas Cake and doing them this way I got to do them all!

You could leave plain and just have a decorative glace fruit topping and a little cellophane:

Or traditional Royal Icing:

Some fondant icing for those who prefer their teeth intact:

Beyond the simple by taking a plain iced white cake, indenting some lines to resemble brickwork and and arch you get an igloo. So simple by with a great effect. Finish off with some sugarpaste penguins to complete:

As not everyone likes fruit cake, a small amount of chocolate madeira batter and some chocolate flavoured teddy-bear coloured icing makes these little puddings:

The smaller cakes are harder to cover in fondant, and finger prints more noticeable but a good way to practice skills. I'm definately doing this next year, not loads of cake left over and plently of scope for my imagination!

Christmas Cake

Well, I finally managed to finish my Christmas cake and used some of the penguins from my tutorial to decorate it. It took a few goes arranging them, as at first I had them grouped round the snowman. According to my family it looked like something out of the wickerman! So, I had to make 3 of them into carolers to give a less sinister effect.

The cake itself had a very strong flavour, probably because I've been feeding it and it had quite a lot of fruit, so I may tone this down next year. Marzipan and fondant icing finished it off, with a little of the 'magic sparkles' for snow. I bought these ages ago and haven't been able to find a use for them so far.

I haven't been able to bring myself to eat the penguins yet, though I did allow it to be cut. The first year I made it I'd put so much time and effort in I wouldn't let anyone touch it for a week.

So for all who celebrate it Merry Christmas!

Sugarpaste penguin tutorial

The last time I made my penguins they seemed to go down well. Quite a lot of people searched for how to make them, so I thought I'd do a little tutorial for all those who wanted to know.

They're quite take time, but aren't particularly difficult and good for decorating this time of year. What's nice is that (unintentionally) they all end up with different little personalities.

Step 1: Roll a thumb sized piece of white sugarpaste into a ball, then shape into a fat teardrop shape.

Step 2: Use a 45mm rose petal cutter on black sugarpaste and wrap it round the body like a coat.

Step 3: Roll tiny amounts of yellow sugarpaste into balls, flatten, then use a modelling tool (or cocktail stick) to make them into webbed feet. With a 30mm rose petal cutter cut out a base, and attach to the body as shown keeping some of the feet on the base.

Step 4: With a 15mm rose petal cutter make two wings and attach to the body.

Step 5: Roll a pea sized bit of black sugarpaste into a head.

Step 6: With the pointed end of a modelling tool, make an indentation in the head. Roll a tiny piece of yellow sugarpaste into a ball, then make two pointed ends. Push one end into the head.

Step 7: Flatten two balls of white suagrpaste for the eyes, then add pupils with sugarpaste, gel or edible marker.

N.B. In a FMM 5-rose petal set the largest one is for the body, the middle one for the base, and the smallest one for the wings.

You can add other decorations, such as scarves, hats etc... I 'stuck' the bits together by moistening them and holding for a few seconds. Once completed I left them to dry. You could leave each seperate component to dry, then use edible glue, but it makes it harder to make changes.

If you give them a go, let me know I love to see how they turn out.

Sugarcraft

I got some new sugarpaste colours and tools, so thought I'd play with them. I practised roses, and tried out my rose leaf plunger cutter.

Also, I made these little guys:

I'm not sure why penguins, it's just what i felt like. The pound coin is to show the size. This is my favourite one, he looks so cute!

I used an edible food colouring pen for the pupils of the eyes. This is a brilliant invention which saves so much fiddling about, I'll definately be buying a few more colours.