Had a few days off, as been looking back at first two posts and adding and changing things...so now I thought I'd show you what I got up to over the Christmas period. As I was taking all my decorations down, I thought, I have lots of bits and bobs I've made so would love to share them... so first we have...
Mini Christmas Cakes
Mini Christmas Cakes....your all thinking...how?why?..well these cute little things were made and created at a night at seniors (I will probably mention seniors alot...so as I talked about in my first blog, I am member of the senior section of Girlguiding) One of my good friends Alyson, is an amazing baker and she had made these before and so we decided to hold a night back in Nov 2012, where Alyson gave us step by step instructions on firstly how to make the Christmas cakes. (and Thankyou Ally, for giving me the exact measurements of the recipe, and also another thankyou to Chris, for letting me use some of her pics of the process of making the cakes)
Stage 1- Collect regular size tuna tins-and clean throughly!Very odd I know but perfect for the job!Line the base with two circles of baking parchment, and also around the edge of the tin. This recipe makes 2 mini cakes!
Stage 2- Cream together 40g butter/marg and 40g soft brown sugar until a very light,pale colour-as below, next add one beaten egg-a little at a time (to stop it curdling), then a little at a time-fold in 50g SR flour (sieved), then fold in 100g of mixed fruit and 20g glace cherries (chopped up small).
Finally add in approx 1tsp Black Treacle, and a little orange juice...and thats the cake part made!few!
It should look something like this (before).... After- Ally was so kind and took all our cakes home to bake! Temp- 130c for
1 and a half hrs-2 hrs
Ally chose to feed our cakes with some rum....as you can see pictured!!!
A week later, we got to decorate our cute little mini xmas cakes, Again Ally was the leader and showed us how to do so.....
First, you need to get a chunk of marzipan, and rolling it out carefully using icing sugar, to stop it from sticking, to create a circle shape, and so there is enough marzipan for it to tuck around the base of the cake. Before placing it over the cake, you need to brush the cake with orange juice. Once you've placed the marzipan over, you need to tuck around the base, and smooth it all around, you can then trim the edges off.
As you see in the third picture, you then repeat this process but using royal icing this time. It is very simple, just remember to brush the marzipan layer with orange juice, and smooth the edges to give it the best finish.
As a base, we used beer mats covered with foil, they are just the right size for these cakes, and look extra special.
This picture to the left, shows the beautiful sugar craft in the form of some holly that we created for our mini cakes... this was the turn of another friend Soph, as she attends sugar craft classes, and so she showed us how to this. We used white sugar paste and then coloured it ourselves using the colour paste. The most important tip I can give even though I'm not an expert would be to make sure your hands are cold, as I found if there too warm the paste just goes all sticky and horrible.
Here's a little youtube video I've found to give you a helping hand....
Finishing touches..... so after we left seniors, I decided to make my cakes look even better, and I wanted to give them as little Christmas gifts to some family. I did this by using cellophane, some lovely ribbon I picked up and, then I created home-made gift tags using some mini Christmas cards.
I was so happy with the finished product, and thought they looked so lovely. I'm pleased to say that those who received my gifts were really surprised that I'd made them and were really happy with their Mini Christmas Cakes.
Happy Baking!x
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