Well this post should have been up by Christmas day but somehow many other things took over. Firstly I forgot to mention in the almond-paste post that I reserved a small lump of paste which I moulded into a ‘hill’. I put this in the centre of the cake ready for the decoration later. I just managed to get the cake iced and decorated by Christmas eve. The icing was dead simple – just mix sifted icing sugar with egg whites and beat for ten minutes, then add a little drop of glycerine (to stop the icing going too hard) and some lemon juice for flavour.
I let it sit for a while to let any bubbles dissipate, then with the cake on its stand I set it on a turntable ready for icing. A turntable is a great aid, it means you can turn the cake against the knife to smooth the icing – rather than pushing the knife around the cake. This year I rough-iced the top and made it look like snow, threw on a few silver balls, then smooth-iced the sides.
The following day when the icing had hardened I wrapped a pretty frieze around it, made from Christmas paper, then crowned my creation with a tiny fibre-optic Christmas tree! The camera caught it in ‘pink’ mode! We haven’t tasted it yet – still too full of Christmas dinner and other goodies from yesterday.