It's Christmas box time again, and I spent the weekend cooking in earnest. The works in progress are below:
This year, I desperately wanted to make Christmas bauble cakes (also known as temari cakes), because they look so gorgeous, and I have had the spherical mould for ages. I found a great video on Youtube by Joe Hargreaves on how to make them here.
However, do not be fooled - Joe makes this look like a breeze, when in reality, it is a nightmare - a very long nightmare. I made 14 of these cakes, and they are very time consuming, especially if you have other things to do as well.
The base cake recipe that I used was a madeira cake from Taste. Frustratingly, I couldn't find what cake recipe people were using in my research, but someone mentioned that using a dense cake is best and they suggested madeira cake. I was going to use the chocolate cake recipe that I made my Dalek cake from, but it didn't take well to the spherical moulds.
I used a half recipe of the Primrose Bakery vanilla buttercream to bind the cakes together:
I then coloured about 500g of ready to roll fondant light green, brushed the cakes with sieved warmed apricot jam, cut out circles of fondant and massaged them over the cakes. I finished up by decorating the cakes with royal icing piped on top, and sugar pearls (and silver cachous for the white cakes - I didn't quite have enough green fondant):
The first three that I made were not the greatest - two showed the join around the middle and I stretched the fondant too far on a third, so that the jam showed through a bit and the fondant had little stretch marks. I also found it difficult to avoid pleating around the base on all of them. And they seemed to take forever!!
However, in the end, I am happy enough with them - I can see all the faults, but when I look at the photos, they turned out pretty well.
There you go - if you are feeling creative and have quite a bit of time up your sleeve, you can try making Christmas bauble cakes this year. They look really good finished off with lustre, but I just don't have the time or inclination.
5 comments:
They're beautiful! I would have to be in a really patient mood to want to tackle these. It looks like you made quite a few other things too. I haven't even decided what I'm making yet!!
They look gorgeous! I am very impressed. You have absolutely put me off trying my own ;)
I think those cakes look stunning - I couldn't imagine making this myself - even though I would love them - love seeing your Christmas baking each year
They're gorgeous Cakelaw and I really like the shade of pastel that you got! I always go a bit heavy handed with my colouring and it ends up being too bright!
I am seriously impressed. Those came out beautifully.
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