Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you have all enjoyed the festivities so far! Sorry my post is a little late, but there’s been so much going on! Obviously I couldn’t blog about anything other than Christmas cakes at this time of year! So…! I have a few Christmas cakes to share with you…

First up, I have a cake I made for a competition at work. Usually twice a year, the Social Committee for my site arrange baking competitions, and this Christmas the competition was just for a Christmas themed cake with prizes for the best tasting and the best decorated cakes. I wasn’t sure I had enough time, but succumbed to peer pressure from my colleagues and stayed up late on the two nights before the competition to work on a cake! For all the work competitions I have entered so far (I will post pictures on all of these at later dates!), I have always baked a standard Victoria Sponge and tried to come up with cute and interesting ways to decorate it. I thought that for a change this year, I would bake a chocolate cake. This was mostly so that I could cover it in brown chocolate icing which was better for the decoration I had in mind, but also so that I could try a different sponge recipe, and also try a rich chocolate ganache filling. I wanted to make a nativity scene to top the cake and after two nights of modelling figurines, I was able to assemble a brown stable with a star on the top, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, as well as a donkey and a sheep, all out of fondant!

Christmas Nativity Cake

I must say that the donkey was my favourite part of the cake, and most people who saw the cake or saw the photos said that the animals were their favourite parts

The cute donkey

I was also relieved that the stable withstood the journey to work which involves several speed bumps!! It has given me strong faith in edible glue!!

Christmas Nativity Scene

Despite the busy baking month I have had, I couldn’t resist making a few Christmas cupcakes to take to my boyfriends family on Boxing Day!

Christmas Cupcakes

I was very pleased with the lovely cupcake cases and accessories I used for these, which were just from the pound shop! I even bought a few of these lovely boxes to give some cupcakes away in.

The wonderful Pound Store accessories!

I baked simple vanilla cupcakes, and topped them with a delicious white chocolate and cream frosting, which I thought was perfect for the Christmas theme. And despite not knowing I was bringing cupcakes, one of my presents from James’ family was a brilliant cupcake stand, which I immediately assembled and put to use!!

In my new cupcake stand

I would also like to include some Christmas cakes from previous years in this post. For the Christmas cake competition in 2012, I wanted to make a festive fireplace scene, which involved carving up a square cake and stacking it, and without any sort of support (I considered adding dowling rods to help keep the cake pieces stacked but wanted to avoid this) it was a little wobbly! Once the cake was complete, I thought the uneven lines of the brickwork gave it a bit more character and again, it was still standing after the journey to work and was another winner in the competition for the best decorated cake ; ) After spending much longer then expected adding a brickwork pattern to the fondant icing covering the cake, I added a few festive elements, including some holly on top of the mantle piece, and a red stocking hanging from it. Finally next to the fireplace I laid a littler letter to Santa!

Christmas fireplace cake

In 2011 I made my first Christmas bake for a work competition. With a recipe and guidelines from a friend, I made my first Swiss roll, and decorated it like a large Christmas cracker! I made a Father Christmas and several penguins, including two on top of the cake having a snow ball fight! Again, the animals on this cake were the most popular part, and I even had an email from a colleague asking how I made the penguins a she loved them so much and she wanted to make some for a cake she was doing the following weekend!

Christmas cracker cake

And now as a final note I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to thank everyone who has been following my blog the past 6 months or so and showing an interest – so THANK YOU!  😀