How To Ice A Christmas Cake With Ready To Roll Icing
Source – rensawbaking.com |
Christmas is nearly here, and among the late night shopping, present wrapping and festive celebrations you need to find the time to make a Christmas cake for everyone to enjoy after that delicious roast dinner. Christmas cake is actually fairly straightforward to put together, but getting a pristine finish to the icing can be a little tricky, especially if you’re not used to using ready to roll icing.
You’ll need a fruit cake for your base, which should then be coated in a marzipan layer to both trap in the moisture of the cake and provide a firm, smooth surface for the icing. Once you’ve applied the marzipan and let it set it’s time to get the icing on. Follow these steps to on how to ice a Christmas cake with ready to roll icing and you’ll have a beautifully finished cake for the holiday season.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- One marzipanned fruit cake you prepared earlier. Ideally allow a week or two between applying the marzipan and the icing as you want the marzipan to be fully set.
- A packet of white ready to roll icing, enough to cover the size of cake you’ve made.
- Icing sugar.
- A bowl of water.
- Rolling pin.
- Cake smoothers.
- Sharp knife.
- Dust your work surface with icing sugar to make sure the ready to roll icing doesn’t stick to the surface.
- Take the amount of ready to roll icing that you need. You want the icing layer to be at least ¼ inch thick when rolled out to the correct side.
- Knead the ready to roll icing for a few minutes to make it pliable and easy to work with.
- Take your rolling pin and firmly roll the icing out. You may need to apply a little more icing sugar if the icing begins to stick to your work surface. Keep rolling out the icing until it is large enough to cover the whole cake with room to spare. If you’re uncertain you can use your rolling pin as a measure.
- Lightly brush the marzipan with water. This will help the icing stick firmly to the marzipan ensuring it doesn’t slip after it has been positioned.
- Fold the icing over the rolling pin, lift it and the simply roll the icing out over the cake.
- Smooth down the icing around the bottom of your cake with your hands and then cut away excess icing with a sharp knife. Don’t chuck the off-cuts though as you can use these to create decorations such as holly leaves and berries by adding some food colour paste.
- Finally grab your cake smoothers and give the surface a final smooth down all over to make sure that the surface is free of any bubbles or bumps.
And that’s it. Applying ready to roll icing on a Christmas cake isn’t hard, as long as you take it slowly, but it is easy to end up with a lumpy finish, but hopefully this guide will help you achieve Christmas cake perfection. For more advice on using ready to roll icing for your cakes and bakes visit renshawbaking.com.