Christmas Cake Icing Recipe | Odlums (2024)

FAQs

What do you ice a Christmas cake with? ›

Fruited Christmas Cakes are traditionally covered with marzipan followed by a layer of white icing. You may wish to Feed and Store your Christmas Cake before adding the icing layers. Traditionally the white layer would be royal icing although you could use vegan royal icing or shop bought fondant icing.

Christmas Cake Decorating options:

Simple – pile top with fresh cherries or other fruit, dust with icing sugar (powdered sugar). Drippy white glaze – use the glaze in this Lemon Cake recipe, but leave out the lemon juice (ie make a plain sweet white glaze). Serving – serve with custard for a traditional experience!

You can use a layer of fondant icing instead of marzipan if you wish. Royal icing is sold in white, but is easy to colour at home using gels (liquids can change the texture).

Royal icing is one of the best icings for decorating cakes. Mixing together powdered sugar, egg whites, and meringue powder or liquid provides a consistency relative to pancake batter. This makes it easy to pour into pastry bags to fulfill your decorating dreams.

To cover a Christmas cake with marzipan, you'll need the cake, some marzipan and a glaze to help the marzipan stick to the cake. Apricot glaze is popular, but marmalade makes a great alternative as the orange flavour echoes the flavours in the Christmas cake.

If you can't find apricot jam then marmalade is a good alternative. A crystal or shredless marmalade is the easiest, but otherwise you will need to warm and then strain the marmalade before using it. You may also find the information in Nigella's directions for the Smooth Hatbox Icing for Christmas cakes helpful.

Ingredients: The main difference between marzipan and fondant is in how they are made. Fondant is primarily made from confectioners' sugar, corn syrup, and water, while marzipan is made primarily from almond meal and water. This gives marzipan a slightly more solid texture, while fondant is more like traditional icing.

Both Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Italian Meringue Buttercream are commonly used by professional bakers, with Swiss meringue being slightly more popular. Both these buttercreams are made by whipping granulated sugar and egg whites into a meringue and then whipping butter into that meringue.

What's the difference between icing and frosting? ›

Frosting is the thickest of these confections and is ideal for spreading or piping on cakes, cupcakes and cookies. Icing is a little thinner than frosting and is often poured or piped over coffee cakes, pound cakes, doughnuts and cookies—and it usually hardens when it dries.

For the best taste and texture, go with Duncan Hines. For a slightly cheaper, and almost equally good alternative, Betty Crocker is your best bet.

It's pretty easy to make them and you only need two ingredients: gelatine and Sprite or any clear soda.

Turn the cake upside down as this gives you a perfect flat surface to start with. You then need to sieve the apricot jam so it is totally smooth as you don't want lumps of apricots under your marzipan and icing. Warm the jam slightly and get a pastry brush ready.

Always cover a fruitcake with marzipan before covering it with fondant or royal icing to keep moisture in the cake and stop oils from seeping into the outside covering and causing discolouration. If you are covering a fruitcake with marzipan, use boiled, sieved apricot jam to stick it to the cake not buttercream.