Icing For Joy

Jill came round in answer to my prayers this week, and taught me how to ice a wedding cake! She is so gifted, and so patient – and between us we got the cake sorted. No pictures yet, other than these two – the first is Bob trimming the cake to the right size [a couple of weeks ago, before the marzipan stage], the second is Jill demonstrating how to ‘lift the icing and lay it like a blanket on a bed’ Yes the icing is green – no you can’t see the finished cake yet!

Not being very experienced at this, and fearful of finding myself short [no height jokes please] I’d bought way too much icing. Jill assured me that it was better to have too much. But I was still left with a substantial ball of green icing trimmings when she went home.

Somewhere in the back of my brain, I remembered Mary Berry on GBBO doing a “Swedish Princess Cake” covered in green icing. And I have “Fika” the IKEA cookbook of traditional Swedish cakes [fika is a time to socialise over coffee, cakes and pastries] so I got the book out and checked. This cookbook has great photographs

This double page spread lists the ingredients for Princess cake – and in case you aren’t sure, helpfully shows you eggs, gelatin leaves, heaps of flour and a smear of cream, plus a pink marzipan rose and green disc. Here’s when I discovered that the green is marzipan, not fondant icing. And you need a pint of cream, 4 leaves of gelatin and 5 eggs. I just wanted to use up a ball of icing in a thrifty way, not go out and buy cream and gelatin. Plus this made a huge, rich cake which would need to be eaten quickly because of the cream.[too fattening] So I reconsidered. I made a regular all-in-one sponge [thankyou Delia] and filled it with a soft buttercream. I used 7” sponge tins – not too big.  I rolled out my fondant and, just like laying the blanket on the bed, I draped it over the sponge. A scrap of marzipan was turned into a rose and two leaves for garnish.

I shall slice it and freeze half for next weekend. Thank you Jill for your help with the cake – and Bob for the continuing encouragement when I panic, and for supplying the blogpost title [it’s a line from the Chris Tomlin worship song “Shout to the Lord”]