Friday 23 December 2011

Time to marzipan your Christmas cake!

If you've made your own Christmas cake this year (like I did- take a peek at my recipe) it will have been soaking up brandy and resting in it's little cocoon of foil wrapping- but now it's time to take it out and cover it with marzipan! You need to do this at least 24 hours before you add the royal icing, to allow it to dry out (the royal icing will stick to the marzipan better if it's drier) but it's not at all difficult- it took me about 10 minutes!

Roll out your marzipan on a clean dry surface dusted with icing sugar (in exactly the same way you would roll out biscuit dough etc.) to about 5mm thick- as always the exact thickness can vary with preference, but try to make sure it's even :)



Take about a tablespoon of apricot jam and heat it in the microwave until it;s just bubbling. Push it through a seive to remove any lumps and allow the runnier part of the jam to cool. When it's a little cooler brush the jam all over your cake- like pasting wallpaper paste over a wall to help the paper stick.




Take you marzipan and drape it carefeully over the cake, then gently press it into the sides of the cake, smoothing it out. Finally trim off the excess marzipan with knife (preferable a palette knife- nothing too sharp) and neaten up the edges.





Now you can leave it to dry out until tomorrow when you can ice and decorate! :)


However, you probably have some leftover marzipan- and what better way to use it up then by making cherry marzipans- they're SUPER easy to make, and rather delicious.

All you will need is; Glace cherries, marzipan and chocolate (to be melted- I used dark but milk would work just as well)

Roll out the marzipan (again on an icing sugared surface) and place a glace cherry on top.




Then rip off a little square, and roll the cherry up inside it, like a lovely edible parcel.




I like to shape mine into teardrop shapes- this makes it easier to hold when dipping in chocolate (plus I really like marzipan so the more the better) So pull of any excess marzipan and just fiddle until you have the shape you want. The place them onto a sheet of greaseproof paper.





Repeat, until you've run out of cherries, or marzipan, or just gotten bored! Pop the tray into a the fridge for a few minutes (to harden the marzipan again) while you melt your chocolate over a bowl of hot water. I used about 120g for around 30 cherries.




Roll the cherries around the chocolate to coat them evenly, then place them back onto the greaseproof paper.





Put them back into the fridge to allow the chocolate to set, then transfer into an air-tight Tupperware and store in the fridge until you're ready to eat them :)




So there's a really simple way to create something rather posh-looking (these are really expensive in shops...) out of 3 ingredients!

Have you marzipaned your cake yet? If not, get to it!



                                                                                                   xGretalRabbittx


p.s. My sister and I are making a gingerbread house today- I'll post pictures either later on or tomorrow :)

2 comments:

  1. So cool!!! This is fantastic! I love marzipan! :D You are so talented, and you food looks amazing.

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  2. Me too- one of the many reasons I love Christmas! Aww thank you, I can't take too much credit for this though- I think a monkey could make cherry marzipans!
    xGretalRabbitx

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