Christmas Cake

I was going to make an impressive Christmas Cake extravanganza - like the previous year's ice castle arrangements complete with lights and things, however, we got overtaken by the season and it just didn't happen!  I did, however, make the usual selection of cakes for gifting, although only remembered to take a photograph before we gave the last one away, so only have the one photograph...

Similarly, I made a huge pile of mini sweet mince - some iced, some topped with stars and some with no topping, and only remembered to take a picture of the last one!

The guest slot...

For my own cake-fest I have to confess I didn't do all of the baking - special mention goes to my Mum who is the Queen of Scones, and who also provided an enormous lemon meringue pie (made with real lemons and NOT the lemon-bath-pearl thing from the packet mixes...), and the swirly topped chocolate cake.  We didn't manage to get a picture of the lemon meringue pie as it was put out last and eaten first before we could snap it with the camera, but we did get the scones and the cake!

40th Wedding Anniversary

 Wedding Anniversary cakes made for my parents who celebrated their Ruby Anniversary this weekend.  The cakes were Nigella's Christmas cake recipe, with my usual addition of cocoa powder instead of some of the flour, with fruit steeped generously in amaretto and the cake fed with some measures of single malt (being the only type of whisky we keep in the house...).  The cakes were then covered in a double layer of marzipan - which for future reference is MUCH cheaper in the supermarket than in the cake decorating shop, and then in a double layer of white fondant icing.

We tried the cake with a lovely glass of champagne!