A Winter Cake

Happy 2021! We made it through 2020 and have emerged into a brand-new year.  Have you made any resolutions? My resolution for this year is to be kind to myself.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist and that leads to me being my own very harsh critic - so I’m now working on not being!  The other thing I intend to focus on is to enjoy whatever it is I’m doing, even if I can’t create a masterpiece. 

With that in mind, this week’s post is a Winter Cake.  You may have heard them called Christmas cakes but if they’re not finished until January, it’s a Winter Cake!  It’s true!! With all the food we had to be eaten by less people due to the late Tier change rules, we really didn’t need the cake.  However, we’ve now ploughed our way through the festive goodies and so it was time for the cake to make an appearance. I made the fruit cake way back in October using Nigella Lawson’s Boozy Christmas cake recipe.  I also used a cake belt for the first time.  It was genius! The cake rose evenly whilst baking and a cake with a perfectly level top emerged from the oven.  I hate marzipan so I just went straight in with some fondant icing and covered the cake.  I would normally ice the board too but I hadn’t bought enough fondant.

I went for a snowflake theme since the weather is chilly at the moment and cut out a load of snowflakes in different sizes with my handy cutters.

Using vodka as adhesive, I stuck the snowflakes onto the cake in a random fashion and added a few around the board too.  I mixed up some icing and piped dots in between the flakes and then finished with a blast of edible pearlized spray to give a glittery look. 

All that’s left now is to eat it! Mr L’s birthday is in early January so our healthy eating doesn’t begin until after that – very handy indeed!