When most people think of a Christmas cake, the Yule log comes to mind. The cake is often one of many desserts spread on the dinner table after a huge family meal. Lately, Christmas cakes have more often been decorated cakes, depicting a snowy scene, Santa, or a Christmas tree.
Over the past few years, cake decorating has become a widely recognized hobby and art form. Popular television shows have sparked increased interest in this art and have inspired people to take classes and start making cakes on their own instead of buying them.
Christmas
While the outside of the typical Christmas cake has evolved with the time, the same family favorites still lie on the inside of the cake. Today's cakes, while covered in buttercream or fondant, can even be flavored with mint flavoring oil for that seasonal flair.
Your cake will come out much better if you plan out the design in advance. Draw a sketch to see how it will look and to get an idea of what colors look good together. If you have time, you can practice new cake decorating techniques in advance, but when it comes to a more complicated cake, you will need time for gum paste decorations to dry. Depending on the weather, some can take up to a week to harden. This also depends on how large your gum paste figure is.
If you don't want to get too complicated, here are a few ideas that are relatively simple. You can decorate any shape cake with Christmas presents made from gum paste. Just form a cube out of different colors of gum paste. Cut up thin strips of contrasting colors to attach to these cubes. Using a little gum glue to adhere them, lay these strips on the cubes in a criss cross pattern. You can even form a small bow for the top of the presents. For a Christmas tree cake, you can either buy the tree cake pan or carve the cake out of a sheet cake. Frost it in green and decorate with small candies.
Another simple idea is to make a Christmas holly cake. The green and red holly contrasts nicely with a simple white cake. To make the holly, you will need gum paste and a holly leaf cutter. Tint some gum paste a dark green, roll it out thin and cut the holly leaves. For each grouping of holly, you'll need three leaves. Dry the leaves on crumpled aluminum foil to give them a more natural shape. Tint gum paste red and roll three pea sized balls for each holly grouping. When all the gum paste decorations are dry, spray them with confectioner's lacquer. Arrange 3 leaves together so they fan out and place the berries in the center. Attach your gum paste leaves and berries with gum glue. You can either place several leaf groupings around the edge or create the entire edge of the cake out of holly.
To create a simple wintery scene, make white chocolate snowflakes to decorate the cake. Either draw or print out pictures of snowflakes, tape them down and tape plastic wrap over them. Pipe melted white chocolate using the #4 cake decorating tip and place them in the freezer for 5 minutes. Carefully peel them off the plastic. They can either lay flat on the cake or you can stick them into the icing and make them stand up.
Decorating Christmas Cakes
Theresa Happe is a baker, cake decorator, and author of http://www.cake-decorating-corner.com, a website featuring cake photos with detailed instructions for all occasions, and cake and icing recipes.