Gloverly Cupcakes

Last year after Christmas I was sitting down having a cup of tea in a rare quiet moment and thought I would browse Pinterest for a bit, I came across a lovely Christmas gnome cake and thought it looked a bit different so I would do something similar for Christmas next year. Little did I know how popular Nordic gnomes would become this year! I am sure I say this each year, but this is my favourite Christmas cake – until next year! Click here to get an insight into how I made it.

The original idea for the cake can be found here. I made my Christmas cake with two 5” fruit cakes and one 4” fruit cake and went back to using Delia’s recipe again this year. I covered them in marzipan then coloured some sugar paste pale brown. I rolled it out and cut strips that were about 5-7mm wide, I painted the tops of each strip with slightly watered down dark brown food colouring. I took one strip and starting from one end started to wind it up a bit like a snails shell, once I had reached the end I got another strip and kept going till the diameter was almost the size of the cake. I then rolled it gently with a rolling pin to flatten it a bit, then carefully placed it on top of the cake and smoothed it into place. I coloured some more sugar paste dark brown and rolled it out into a long strip big enough to wrap around the outside of the cake, then used my silicone oak mat to make the bark texture before putting it onto the cake. I then used some dark brown petal dust to add some definition.

I made the gnomes body using Rice Krispie treats which I rolled into a ball then covered with grey sugar paste. I made the hat in the same way and squashed the Rice Krispie treats around a thick florist wire that I bent into shape. I then covered it in chocolate ganache before icing it.

I made some royal icing and added some grey food colouring then began piping the beard. To get the beard effect I piped from bottom to top, without sticking the start of the piping to anything, I piped upwards in mid air then just pushed the piping bag to the bottom of the hat to complete each line. So each line was dangling down and not touching anything at the bottom. Once done I used some white sugar paste to put around the edge of the hat.

The girls absolutely love the little gnome, there was lots of shrieking from Chloe when she first saw him! Just a shame this year we can’t have friends and family round so no one will get to see it. But we are definitely going to appreciate having him sat on our sideboard this Christmas!