Every year I make a Christmas cake, using my family’s traditional recipe. Once the cake has had a few weeks to be soaked in booze, it’s retrieved from its tin, and decorating it completes this much-loved culinary ritual! I’d decided to decorate it earlier than usual this year, as we’d often leave it until a few days before Christmas Day, when there was so much other food around that it often got sidelined (it tastes good, promise!), and by the time Boxing Day and beyond came, then we were all sick of Christmas food anyway. I figured that by decorating it now, it can be eaten and enjoyed with a cup of tea or mulled wine in the run up to the big day instead, and there will be no waste: win-win.
I absolutely adore the decorations we use as they have great sentimental value to me, as they were my late Nan’s. They are a bit battered and very retro but I wouldn’t have it any other way, plus I do love a good deer! Silver balls add a finishing touch to our thick, homemade icing (this covers the marzipan, one of the best bits!).
How do you decorate your cake? Do you do any particular Christmas baking each year?
Love it! I bake cookies and breads that remind me of my Grandma. One that specifically reminds me of her is an Apricot Nut Bread that I adore, and the smell makes me feel like she is here with me. 🙂
Author
Oh Jodi that’s so lovely, and what a great memory to be able to recreate through baking 🙂 Apricot nut bread sounds the business!
Oh we used to have a deer and a sign post like that when I was little! Along with Father Christmas , an outsize lantern, an igloo, two Eskimos and a tree naturally! Every year Mum would try to convince us we needed something simple and elegant on the cake and very year we’d insist on the same little bits of plastic – my sister has them now to keep the tradition going!
Author
I can’t bear to use anything else now except the old family decorations- tasteful it ain’t but I love a bit of retro! x
Your Christmas cake looks lovely, really cute. I haven’t decided how I’m going to decorate mine yet as I try and do something a little different each year. 🙂
Author
Thanks Julie- would love to see your finished cake when you’re done! x