Gloverly Cupcakes

Last year I didn’t get round to writing about the Christmas cake I made, mostly due to being over ambitious with what I wanted to do before the big day – there were so many thing I wanted to bake, Christmas decorations I wanted to make and prepare for 12 people coming to ours for Christmas. I’d never hosted Christmas before either! So I thought I would write a short blog about it this year in between feeding, nappy changing, playing and watching Emily sleep – it’s amazing how much time you can spend just watching your little one! Click

I used Delia Smiths fruit cake recipe again, which you can find here. I baked two 6″ cakes and one 4″ cake and covered them with marzipan. I then covered them with white sugar paste. I then made a long strip of white sugar paste, cut a straight edge at the bottom and a wobbly edge on the top. I made sure the top and bottom of the strip had a light dusting of icing sugar and then rolled it up from one end. I then dampened the edge of the cake and placed the rolled up sugar paste on the edge and unrolled it, smoothing it on around the outside of the cake. I did the same again with a narrower strip to make a second row of hills.

I didn’t have an airbrush to use to make the affect on the icing, so I used a grey petal dust and a paint brush. It took ages to do, so an airbrush would be a lot quicker – I’ve now bought one!

The trees and snow were piped on with royal icing and the little birds were made from coloured sugar paste rolled out and the shapes were cut using various piping nozzles to make different sizes circles.

I usually end up making a Christmas cake with sugar paste figures or a fun design, so I was great to try something new. This year I am hoping to make a fun cake, so keep an eye out for it, hopefully I will have time to decorate it and blog about it before Christmas.