My Second Christmas Cake & everything is all a bit last minute!

I don´t know what happened to Christmas this year but before I knew it or I could blink it was all over. I was so unorganised and everything was all a bit hectic and last minute! I was still wrapping presents on Christmas Eve and icing my Christmas Cake on Christmas Day!! I think that part of the problem is that schools and academies finish so late for the Christmas hols...they don´t start till the 23rd December!!!

I did do quite a bit of baking, I make some Christmas biscuits, which unfortunately didn´t get round to blogging, mince pies as per usual but they were also dashed off at the last minute as I didn´t have the filling till my parents arrived on the 22nd December, and then my Christmas Cake.

Although I enjoyed last year´s Christmas Cake I thought I´d try out a different recipe this year and tried the Rich Fruit Cake recipe from my The International School of Sugarcraft Beginners book. As my husband and my in-laws don´t really like fruit cake very much and I don´t want to be the one stuck eating it all up, I made the smallest cake and even halved that recipe and made it in a loaf tin. I was really worried I´d dried it out but I think my Mum saved it by slapping lots more brandy on it for it to soak in and become more moist.

I used Dr Oetker´s roll-out marzipan ,which I stuck on using apricot jam and then some Renshaw´s white Regalice roll out fondant (again stuck on with the apricot jam). I then coloured some white fondant green and using a small Xmas tree biscuit cutter, cut out a green fondant tree, which I stuck in the centre of the cake more or less using edible glue. I then used silver balls stuck on the tree as baubles and a yellow star and voila, a simple, easy and quickly decorated Christmas Cake. I was very pleased with this cake as it tasted pretty delicious and quite professional, even if I do say so myself!