Christmas Cake 2013

I had all the intentions of making a proper mammy's Christmas cake this year. I even bought all the ingredients, but somehow it was Christmas Eve and there was still no cake! (Plus the rum may have 'disappeared', but we'll not mention that!!) So, in a bit of a panic, I turned to Google for a quicker recipe. I'm not too pushed on fruit cake, but wanted to use at least some of the ingredients I had bought. And my favourite part of Christmas cake is the marzipan and icing so I definitely wanted to include that. I came across this simple recipe for a Cherry and Almond cake and loved the sound of it! I had the cherries and ground almonds and thought it would taste lovely covered in marzipan.

For the decoration, I turned to Pinterest. I have a Christmas board that I've been adding to throughout the year and chose an insanely cute snowman from it. I'm not actually sure why I chose a fondant design. I rarely use fondant and when I do it's generally only to add little decorations. It turned out pretty good for my second ever fully fondant cake, if I do say so myself!!

Cherry and Almond Cake

(adapted from Odlums)

200g butter, softened

225g golden caster sugar

3 large eggs

225g plain flour

100g ground almonds

1/2 tsp almond extract

220g glacé cherries, halved

Preheat the oven to 180ºC and line a circular cake tin. Beat the butter and sugar together until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, adding a little bit of the flour with each egg. Stir in the remaining flour and ground almonds. Fold in the almond extract and cherries. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

You will also need:

Ready-to-roll fondant

Ready-to-roll marzipan

Honey

Red food colouring

Green food colouring

Orange food colouring

Malteesers

Wait until your cake has cooled complete before decorating. Roll out the marzipan and white fondant as  thin as you can. Brush some honey onto the cake. Cover with marzipan. Brush with a little bit more honey and cover with the white fondant. Make the hat, scarf and carrot nose from fondant. Add malteeser eyes and mouth.