Decorating my bird cage cake

Several weeks ago I shared with you my Christmas cake, shaped like a bird cage and then how to marzipan bird cage shaped cake. Last week I shared how I iced my cake, so finally this week I show you how I decorated it!

How to decorate bird cage shaped cake
Ingredients

• Gluten free birdcage shaped Christmas cake covered in a layer of marzipan and iced
• Royal Icing
• Ready to roll white icing
• Petal paste roses (instructions coming soon...)
• Petal paste bird (instructions coming soon...)
• Fondant snowflakes (instructions coming soon...)
• Pink edible beads
• Fondant holly leaves (instructions coming soon...)
• Iced ring
• Pink, green and white edible glitter
• Aqua edible dust

Equipment

• Rolling pin
• Bakers twine
• Pins
• Piping bag fitted with small circular nozzle
• Wooden cocktail sticks
• FMM textured lace set

Method

• To get your bird cage even, start by placing a length of bakers twine over the top of your cake and pin in place, so that you have divided the cake in half
• Continue pinning bakers twine to your cake until you have segmented the cake into 12 pieces
• Lightly push the string into the cake so you are left with small indentations and remove string entirely
• Lightly sieve icing sugar on to your work top and knead white icing until soft and pliable. Then, using a rolling pin, roll into a long shape about 5mm thick, i.e. at least the width of the lace imprint and long enough to go round the cake

• Push lace imprint into rolled out icing strip, continue until strip has imprint from end to end. Using a sharp knife, trim sides of strip, lightly brush cooled boiled water onto back of strip and adhere to bottom of cake. Trim off excess at ends
• Make up royal icing as package instructions
• Spoon into piping bag fitted with circular nozzle

• Starting at the top of the cake, carefully pipe a strip of royal icing down one of the indentations in the cake
• Continue until you have all of the cage spindles piped
• Roll out fondant icing as before and cut a small circle out using a round cookie cutter, lightly brush the back of your fondant circle with water and place at top of the cake in the centre
• Then roll a small ball out of white fondant icing and attach to the top of the cake using a wooden tooth pick

• Lightly sieve icing sugar on to your work top and knead white icing until soft and pliable. Then, using a rolling pin, roll into a long shape about 5mm thick, that is at least the width of the lace imprint and long enough to go round the cake
• Push lace imprint into rolled out icing strip, continue until strip has imprint from end to end
• Using a sharp knife, trim sides of strip, lightly brush cooled boiled water onto back of strip and adhere to the top straight part of the cake. Trim off excess at ends

• Brush edible white glitter on to spindles of cage
• Continue brushing white edible glitter on to cage
• Brush aqua cake shimmer onto blue icing
• Work out the position of your petal paste bird and push bird foot into cake

• Pipe a small dab of white royal icing onto the front of your fondant bird, line bird up with its foot and push into the side of the cake
• Pipe a small dab of royal icing onto the back of the fondant roses and place them at the top and bottom of the cake
• Pipe a small dab of royal icing onto the back of the holly leaves and place them at the top and bottom of the cake

• Pipe a small dab of white royal icing onto the edible pink beads and place next to the holly leaves on the cake
• Using edible glitters, dust roses with pink glitter and leaves with green glitter
• Pipe a small dab of white royal icing onto the back of the snowflakes and place on cake
• Attach iced ring to ball on top of cake and lightly dust entire cake with sieved icing sugar

Here it is on my Winter Wonderland table



Have a sweet day!

Icing my bird cage shaped cake

Several weeks ago I shared with you my Christmas cake, shaped like a bird cage and then how to marzipan bird cage shaped cake. After putting off icing and decorating for as long as I could, I finally iced and decorated it just in time for Christmas Eve! Decorating my bird cage shaped cake coming next Saturday!

How to ice bird cage shaped cake
Ingredients

• Gluten free birdcage shaped Christmas cake covered in a layer of marzipan
• White, ready to roll icing ('rolled fondant' in the US)
• Icing sugar (confectioner's icing)
• Wiltons teal icing colour

Method

• Lightly sieve icing sugar on to your work top
• Knead 500g of white icing until soft and pliable
• Using a tooth pick, add a drop of food colouring
• Knead icing until the colour is completely even

• Roll icing into a round shape
• Using a rolling pin, roll out icing, turning the icing so it stays in a rough circle and does not stick to your work top
• Roll until about 5mm thick - I used rolling pin measures to get a super even layer of icing
• Using a cake smoother, buff the icing until you have a nice, shiny, smooth circle big enough to cover your cake

• Position cake onto cake stand or plate
• Lightly brush cake with cooled, boiled water
• Carefully lift up icing and place on cake
• Very lightly run your hands over icing so it adheres to the marzipan
• Using a sharp knife, cut off excess icing from bottom of cake

Have a sweet day!

How to marzipan bird cage shaped cake

Yesterday I shared with you my Christmas cake, shaped like a bird cage. Today I am showing you how I marzipan it. I decided to place each cake section on a 15cm diameter, 2mm thick cake board so that when it comes to serving it I can cut manageable slices instead of very thin long slices. I am pretty happy with the results and definitely found my new rolling pin measures gave me a more even layer of marzipan. Next up is icing it! Not looking forward to that.....

How to marzipan bird cage shaped cake
Ingredients

• Gluten free birdcage shaped Christmas cake
• Marzipan
• Apricot jam

Method

• Lightly sieve icing sugar on to your work top
• Knead 500g of marzipan until soft and pliable, and roll into a ball
• Using a rolling pin, roll out marzipan, turning the marzipan around after every few rolls so it stays in a rough circle and does not stick to your work top
• Roll until about 5mm thick. I used rolling pin measures to get a super even layer of marzipan

• Place half ball cake onto cake board
• Get cake level on board and fill in any gaps by pushing marzipan into them
• Gently heat jam in microwave
• Brush jam over entire cake

• Carefully lift up marzipan and place on cake
• Very lightly run your hands over marzipan so it adheres to the jam
• Using a sharp knife, cut off excess marzipan from bottom of cake
• Place to one side

• Lightly sieve icing sugar on to your work top
• Knead 500g of marzipan until soft and pliable, and roll into a sausage shape
• Using a rolling pin, roll out marzipan, turning marzipan around after every few rolls so it stays in a rectangle and does not stick to your work top
• Check it will fit the height and circumference of your cakes (the height of my two cakes was just about the size of my cake smoother)
• Roll until about 5mm thick

• Place each cake on to a cake board and stack on top of each other
• Gently heat jam in microwave
• Brush jam over entire cake
• Carefully lift up marzipan and place on cake. Very lightly run your hands over marzipan so it adheres to the jam

• Using a sharp knife, cut off excess marzipan from top and bottom of cake
• The ends will overlap, so using a sharp knife cut a straight line down through both layers of marzipan and remove excess marzipan from either side of your line
• Using a cake smoother, smooth ends together so that join starts to disappear
• Place marzipan half ball cake on top of marzipan stacked cakes and gently smooth marzipan at bottom of half cake to marzipan at top of the stacked cakes

Have a sweet day!