It's Christmas!

For the last few years instead of other gifts, I've been making little decorated Christmas cakes for my friends at Christmas.

I started a few weeks ahead, doing it in sessions, as a fair few hours can be whiled away...

Decorated biscuits: using stencils

Two occasions: My great-niece's Georgina's 1st birthday party as well as Mother's Day....so some heart shaped biscuits were going to be fitting on both accounts.

Photo by Sarah Ryan

I usually use gingerbread biscuits for decorating as they keep really well, but this time I used a vanilla shortbread (they'd be eaten pretty quickly and the kids would like vanilla biscuits better, I reasoned...)

Naked cakes

Naked cakes seem to be a bit of a trend, so I was keen to try out the method. Basicly, it's a style of icing a more formal or party cake, where the layers are still visible and no outer covering of frosting or icing is applied. Often fresh flowers are used for decoration.

Photo by Sarah Ryan

I decided I'd try it out so made two nice butter cakes.

Ombré ruffle cake

Ombré: (adj.) having tones of colour that shade into each other, graduating from light to dark                           (Source: OED online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 3 April 2015)

Ruffle: (n.) A strip of lace or other material, gathered along one edge to make an ornamental frill or decoration (Source: OED online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 3 April 2015).

So...strips of fondant icing, gradually becoming darker in colour, making frills to decorate the side of a cake!

There are several different methods to do this, mainly whether the frills face upwards (like mine) or downwards (a bit trickier as they tend to want to sit flat against the side of the cake).