Starry Christmas Cake

Well, here we are. Christmas Eve. The stuffings are made - one chestnut with apricots and ginger that will go in the bird and one 'green' stuffing made with leeks, spring greens and lots of herbs. The turkey is sitting in the fridge awaiting its fate tomorrow. The timeplan is written - this is my first year cooking the lunch so it could be interesting (!). My niece and nephew are just getting out the mince pie for Father Christmas and a carrot for Rudolph and we are all feeling very festive.

I finally iced my Christmas cake. A very simple design seeing as this is also my first ever attempt. The pressure was on as my sister is a professional wedding cake maker and my mother is also very skilled - one wonders why I volunteered. But I'm quite pleased with the result. I was less pleased with the cake itself - I followed Delia's recipe and it was totally overcooked miles before she suggested. I've been feeding it over the past few weeks though with 'soaking mixture' - equal parts of sweet Oloroso sherry, dark rum and glycerine and it feels fairly sticky and moist now.

To decorate, I filled in any holes with marzipan before covering with marzipan (using warmed apricot jam as the 'glue'.

After the marzipan and I covered with fondant icing and topped simply with different shaped stars. First I tried all white stars...

I loved the all white look, but also wanted to experiment with some edible silver lustre I had in the cupboard. In the end I went half silver/half white. By the time I finished it was rather last, hence the rather poor quality photos...

I wish everyone very Happy Christmas! May you have a wonderful and fun-filled day and, of course, a wonderful lunch!