When to ice the Christmas cake

bluecherry74

I made a Christmas cake this year for the first time ever. Not cutting it to see how it turned out is nearly killing me.

How soon can I ice it? I'll be covering it completely with almond marzipan and covering the top with ready to roll icing. Will the icing stay fresh for a few weeks if I ice it now?

I'm not much of a baker as you can tell.

phormium

You can do it now, it will last months.

Mince Pie

Oh crap, gonna have to cover mine in marzipan this week even though I hate hate hate marzipan.
Need to leave the marzipan to set for a day or so before you cover in the fondant.

bluecherry74

Thanks, phormium. For some reason I had it in my head that it would go stale!

Mince Pie, my biggest challenge will be getting the marzipan onto the cake without eating it all first. I LOVE marzipan. Glad I bought an extra packet just in case, you know, I didn't have enough. I didn't know about letting it set either so thanks for mentioning that.

phormium

Home made marzipan needs to dry out and set a bit for a day or two, bought stuff never really sets so I don't think it matters. I usually marzipan, leave overnight and sugarpaste next day. Both marzipan and sugarpaste have a very long shelf life and in fact with their sugar content I don't know what you would need to do to make them go off, marzipan will eventually grow mould in a damp atmosphere, sugarpaste is practically indestructible! I have decorations made from it that are over 10 yrs old, now I wouldn't eat them but they look fine.

seosamh1980

Mince Pie wrote: »

Oh crap, gonna have to cover mine in marzipan this week even though I hate hate hate marzipan.
Need to leave the marzipan to set for a day or so before you cover in the fondant.

If you don't like it don't use it? You can just put two thin layers of sugarpaste if you want to hide small bumps etc.

Mince Pie

seosamh1980 wrote: »

If you don't like it don't use it? You can just put two thin layers of sugarpaste if you want to hide small bumps etc.

That's what I did last year so will probably do the same again.

Posy

What's sugarpaste? I've never heard of it!
I'll be doing my cake in royal icing this year, will it be okay to ice this Thursday/Friday?

Mince Pie

Posy wrote: »

What's sugarpaste? I've never heard of it!
I'll be doing my cake in royal icing this year, will it be okay to ice this Thursday/Friday?

sugarpaste is just another name for icing, I "think" its normally used to making sugarcraft though.
Crack on with the royal icing. Will be grand cos it keeps forever.

Animord

Royal icing tastes better too imho - a lot of the sugarpastes have, to my mind, a 'chemically' taste.

dee_mc

Mine'll be baked today, almond pasted tomorrow and royal iced Christmas Eve if it's lucky - we like the icing fairly soft though!

seosamh1980

Posy wrote: »

What's sugarpaste? I've never heard of it!
I'll be doing my cake in royal icing this year, will it be okay to ice this Thursday/Friday?

Sugarpaste is soft pliable icing that comes ready to roll out and apply to the cake. It's quite sweet, I like it, well, the small bit you get on a slice of cake, I wouldn't eat a ton of it but you only get a little bit on each slice, yum. I just pull it off if it's got a lot of colour which makes it tastes weird, or if it just tastes weird. It's for decoration more than flavour, so lots of people pull it off.

Posy

Thanks guys.
Can't wait to get icing and decorating!