The Icing on the Cake

For the marzipan;

Ingredients

apricot jam
500g natural marzipan
icing sugar

Method
Using a pastry brush cover the entire cake with apricot jam






Sprinkle your surface and rolling pin with icing sugar. Roll the marzipan into a ball with your hands and then take a rolling pin and start rolling out a circle which will be big enough to cover the cake. Cover the cake with the marzipan, there will be folds so just flatten them down as much as you can, then trim off the excess along the bottom. It really doesn't have to be perfect as the cake will be covered in icing. Eat the excess marzipan bits.

For the icing;

This year I went for the snow scene look, using a packet of ready made Silver Spoon Royal icing sugar, to which you just add water and beat until thick (follow the instructions on the packet). I would say keep beating until stiff peaks form, as when it came to icing the cake it seemed to be too runny and there was a lot of fussing about on my part. The alternative is to buy ready made fondant icing and this time glaze the marzipan in apricot jam. Roll the icing into a ball then basically do what you did with the marzipan. This time you want it a little bit neater so carefully smooth down on the sides of the cake and trim off the excess icing. The thing is you want the cake to look homemade, so any imperfections are fine.