Well lets face it, now that Halloween and Bonfire night are both over, it's pretty much all about the lead up to Christmas and so I thought I'd start off the festive baking with the classic Christmas cake. I love a bit of boozy rich fruit cake at this time of year (or anytime of year actually!) and boozy my recipe certainly is as I soak my fruits in sherry a week before baking my cakes, and feed them with more once cooked and cooled- nice!
This year I have been making lots of individual cakes to be part of the Christmas hampers for sale at my work place Tiffin Tea House. Icing and decorating over 30 little cakes certainly takes its toll but they really do make lovely little gifts and it is something one can do in advance since a good rich fruit cake will actually improve and 'mature' over time so it's always good to make them early!
To make these little gift cakes, all you need is a large deep square baking tin and your favourite fruit cake recipe. Once baked, you can cut your cakes into any size you like- I did mine 3" by 3" to make perfect little cubes. For those of you who are not a fan of a fruit cake (and I know many who aren't!) then you can of course use any cake recipe you like-genoise sponge with butter icing and jam works well and I find that this generally goes down well with most people, even the fussy ones!
To cover the cakes you can colour your own sugar paste which is available in most supermarkets, or buy it already coloured which is certainly the easier option! I chose to decorate mine with handmade sugar paste bows and stars but other shapes are available (!) so let your imagination go wild!
Once you have let the icing dry out a little, wrap each cake in cellophane and finish them off with some pretty ribbon or stickers- I love these cute little stickers from dotcomgift shop.
Now all you need to do is to give your gift cakes to the special (most deserving) people in your life- just wait until you see the smiles on their faces :)
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