Gloverly Cupcakes

Every year I like to try a different Christmas cake design. I usually do something slightly silly but this year I came across this cake on Pinterest and really wanted to give it a go. It’s very different to anything I’ve ever done before. Although I had fun making it, it did take about a day and a half! On the first day I covered both cakes (one fruit cake and one rocky road) in marzipan and left them to dry out a bit overnight. I made the trees, moon and silhouette of Santa’s sleigh (out of sugar florist paste) since they needed to harden. I also made the templates for the silhouettes of the village out of paper. The next day I did everything else – first I covered the cakes in navy sugar paste. If I’d have been more organised I would have bought some pre-coloured icing since colouring nearly 2kg took quite a while! Next I made some florist paste slightly lighter than the cake and rolled it out really thin. I used the template I’d made to cut out the silhouette of the village and stuck it straight on the cake before it hardened. I mixed the icing that was left with a bit of white to make it lighter and re-rolled it for the next silhouette and finally I rolled some white out for the hills.The next bit was the most time consuming – if I did it again I would cut circles out of icing, lots of them, and then stick them on once they had hardened. I would also use white for the big snowflakes and then slightly blue for the smaller ones to give it more perspective, like the village silhouette. What I actually did was roll up different size balls of white icing and stick them on with edible glue. Once the whole cake was covered I stuck the moon and trees on. Finally I made some snowballs out of white icing to put at the bottom of the trees.This cake was meant to be to take away for Christmas but I’m not sure how well it’s going to travel!