Icy Christmas cakes recipe: Mini glazed cakes from 1969 - Click Americana (2024)

FAQs

How to ice a Christmas fruit cake? ›

Brush the cake with a colourless alcohol (vodka is a good option) or cold boiled water to help the icing stick. Start by laying the icing at the back of the cake and lower it down to the front. Use the flats of your hands to smooth the icing over the cake. Neatly trim away any excess icing.

Can you ice a Christmas cake without using marzipan? Yes. If you paint the cake with apricot jam, you can use a fondant icing and just fix it on with the jam. Are any of your Christmas dessert recipes suitable for freezing?

Christmas Cake is a traditional fruit cake with a rich, velvety texture that's so full flavoured and moist it can be eaten plain. But no one turns away a slosh of custard! Usually Christmas Cakes need to be started the day before, with overnight soaking of dried fruit.

The hole in the center is usually filled with a variety of dried fruits and nuts. In Portugal, it is a popular tradition to include a fava bean in the cake. Whoever finds the fava bean in their slice is considered to have good luck for the coming year.

There's no hard and fast rule about when to ice your cake, but it's best to do it between 24 hours and a week ahead of the big day.

We would suggest icing the cake about a week before Christmas if you want to avoid a last minute rush. Cover the cake with marzipan and then if possible let the cake stand for 24 to 48 hours so that surface of the marzipan can dry out.

The videos below give great tips on how to trim it neatly and create the perfect base for icing your Christmas cake. Leave the Christmas cake covered in marzipan in a cool, dry place. Allow it to dry for at least 24 hours before covering with fondant icing, and at least two days before covering with royal icing.

Instead of using royal icing, the cake can be iced with rolled fondant, which is a quick-and-easy way to create a smooth iced surface for your cake. You can use it alone or with the marzipan layer and even finish with a splash of royal icing if you are feeling a little decadent.

Turn the cake upside down as this gives you a perfect flat surface to start with. You then need to sieve the apricot jam so it is totally smooth as you don't want lumps of apricots under your marzipan and icing. Warm the jam slightly and get a pastry brush ready.

Fruit cake is a traditional cake made with candied and dried fruit, nuts and spices. The fact that it is generally soaked in spirits like brandy, bourbon or rum contributes to its reputation for having a long shelf life.

What is the difference between a fruit cake and a Christmas cake? ›

Christmas cakes are also commonly made with pudding while a fruit cake uses butter, however there are Christmas cake recipes that do contain butter. The traditional Scottish Christmas cake, also known as the Whisky Dundee, is very popular. It is a light crumbly cake with currants, raisins, cherries and Scotch whisky.

You can use rum, brandy or whisky for spice, or if you like citrus flavours, try an orange liqueur. Cherry brandy and amaretto will also work well if you prefer these.

In the 1980s, a woman unmarried by 25 was dismissed as "Christmas cake" — thrown out on Dec. 26. These days the big number is 31, and women unmarried by that age are "New Year's Eve noodles," noodles being a typical New Year's Eve dish.

Inspired by gnomes and hobgoblins in Scandinavian mythology, the gonk has become truly iconic at Christmas. You may recognise these ever-so-popular bearded fellas from seeing them on a mantelpiece or as a Christmas tree decoration, and now you can make a Christmas gonk in edible form.

The Christmas sixpence

A silver sixpence was placed into the pudding mix and every member of the household gave the mix a stir. Whoever found the sixpence in their own piece of the pudding on Christmas Day would see it as a sign that they would enjoy wealth and good luck in the year to come.

Fruited Christmas Cakes are traditionally covered with marzipan followed by a layer of white icing. You may wish to Feed and Store your Christmas Cake before adding the icing layers. Traditionally the white layer would be royal icing although you could use vegan royal icing or shop bought fondant icing.

I stop feeding my cake a week before I want to marzipan and ice it. Turn the cake upside down as this gives you a perfect flat surface to start with. You then need to sieve the apricot jam so it is totally smooth as you don't want lumps of apricots under your marzipan and icing.

Icing a Christmas cake can be done a few weeks before you plan to serve it, so get it done early and it'll be one less thing to worry about on the big day. If your decoration skills are somewhat limited, it is easy to make a plain iced cake look spectacular with nothing more than a piece of ribbon and a little holly.