Evening All!
Only Lil' Me... Back again with another post in the birthday fruit saga!
Tonight was the night I took the bull by the horns and put all my lovely new toys to the test, and marizpanned the fruit cake. The cake's been resting in a cold, dry place since the weekend and is still looking lovely and fresh. I'm really pleased with the colour that the cake has gone, not too dark and not too light. Nice one! Now, this is the first time that I've done this properly, not just dumped the marizpan over the cake and hoped for the best, so I had a search around on youTube to see if there were any decent videos giving an overview. The one I found was from a website called Cake Baker, and they have plenty of advice and tips on a variety of baking... A good find!
Right then, let's get started...
What You'll Need
About 700g Marizpan - based upon the guidelines from Delia for an 8" round cake. I've used Waitrose Cook's Ingredients White Marzipan, although you can make your own.
1 tablespoon of Apricot Conserve
Icing Sugar - to dust your worksurface and rolling pin to prevent the marzipan sticking
Cake Drum - I've used a 10" round one
Fondant Polisher
Fondant Spacers
Rolling Pin
Pallette Knife
Pastry Brush
Cake Turntable - the new toy!
What'll You Need to Do
To get a nice smooth top surface, turn over your cake and place in the centre of the cake drum
Now we need to make sure the gaps around the bottom at filled and the cake is levelled
Take about 200g of the marzipan and roll it into a sausage shape, then plug the gap at the bottom of the cake. Push the marzipan into the gaps making sure there are no air pockets. If the cake is not level, use the marzipan to level out the cake
When the bottom is fully filled, use a pallette knife to smooth the marzipan up the sides of the cake, this gives a nice finish for your icing to sit on later
Knead the remaining marzipan until it is soft and plyable, and will roll out easily
Using the spacers, roll out the kneaded marzipan into a large circle that will cover the cake. Sprinkle your rolling pin and work surface with icing sugar to help prevent the marzipan sticking
Heat a tablespoon of apricot conserve in a saucepan over a low heat, and then coat the the cake and the marzipan with the glaze
Place the marzipan over the top of the cake, and move it into place so that the top and all sides will be covered
Either using your hand or a fondant polisher, and apply a little pressure to smooth the marzipan on the top of the cake, and then down the sides, smoothing in any folds
Finally, trim off any excess marzipan from around the base of the cake using a pallette knife
I'm not icing the cake for another week, so the best way to store the cake, is to cover it with a clean, dry tea towel and keep the cake in a cool, dry place until ready to ice
So once again we come to the end of another chapter on the road to 'Project Wedding Cake'
Until next time...