We love an incredible-looking layered cake, especially at Christmas. If you’re not a fan of traditional fruitcake, you’ve come to the right cake decorating ideas. We’ve devised two base sponge recipes plus a few ideas for customising their decoration.
Once your cake is baked and cooled, apply a crumb coat of cream cheese frosting and pick your favourite design. For a snowier look, skip the gold spray and layer white on white before decorating with our gingerbread star biscuits or chocolate trees. The cakes for this recipe aren’t difficult to make, but they are softer than some sponge recipes, so you’ll need to handle them carefully. Add extra sparkle to the Christmas table with this gloriously gilded, meringue-topped masterpiece. You’ll need fondant icing stars, a spritz of edible gold spray, gold leaf and some decorated meringue kisses. Roll out the fondant icing and stamp out snowflake shapes with a cutter.
Leave to dry on baking parchment. Once dry, spray them gold or brush with lustre powder. Apply a thin layer of the white chocolate icing over the crumb coat. This is to create a neat finish and a naked cake effect, rather than to cover the cake completely. Use a paintbrush or knife to gently lift pieces of the gold leaf, if using, then carefully press them onto the sides and edge of the cake.
Arrange the meringue kisses to cover all or some of the top of the cake. Add the glitter, gold stars, snowflakes and sprinkles to the cake, using a little icing to stick them down. Arrange more meringues around the base of the cake, if you like. We’re confident this red-and-white burst of broken candy canes would make Father Christmas proud. Add the sweets no more than a few hours before serving to prevent any colour from bleeding into the icing. Candy canes come in peppermint, cinnamon or fruit flavours, so be sure to choose your favourite.
Use crushed candy to cover the bottom of the cake for extra pizzazz. Apply a final layer of the white chocolate icing over your cake’s crumb coat, giving it as neat a finish as possible. Put the cake on a stand, if you like. Smash a couple of the candy canes and some sweets, and press shards around the base of the cake. Stick the remaining candy canes into the cake at angles, arrange any remaining whole sweets on top of the cake and sprinkle over the rest of the crushed sweets. For a whimsical wintry scene, try this icy cake decoration.
Use a selection of white and silver sprinkles to create a snowy effect and add homemade or shop-bought meringues for extra crunch. Your decorations can be made up to five days ahead to save time. Grab your apron and let it snow! Add a tiny amount of the blue food colouring to your remaining icing and beat well. Be very careful adding the food colouring or you might end up with icing that’s too dark in colour. Note that the base icing is yellowish, so it’ll actually end up a greeny blue.
Apply a final layer of the icing over the crumb coat, giving it as neat a finish as possible. Use some of the icing to stick the meringue icicles carefully around the edge of the cake so they look as if they’re dripping down. Arrange the meringue kisses and snowflakes on top of the cake. Push silver and pearl balls into the icing, then dust the cake with a little icing sugar for a snowy effect. Dazzle your guests with an elegant gold showstopper topped with a towering gingerbread biscuit star tree. Use the edible gold spray to cover the surface as evenly as possible in a thin layer of shimmer, then create the chocolate drip as detailed in the cake recipe. If you’d rather have a snowy scene, simply leave out the gold spray step and pour the chocolate dripping straight over the white icing.