This year’s Christmas Cake has now been decorated, and the theme this year is “CARNIVAL!!!”.
Somewhere on this planet it’s carnival time at the end of December, so it might as well be here in Foxy Towers.
Your cake photos are invited.
Your Christmas Cake photos please!
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Hull City colours. Respect.
Norwich, surely?
They don’t have colours in Norfolk, that be the devil’s work.
It’s a tribute to Jean Bishop. It’s what she would have wanted.
It’s fer cherridee!
Actually I’ve just realised that it’s a tribute to David Sylvian.
I’m confused what have caterpillars to do with carnival?
How tickled I am!
Excellent looking cake.
Ours was bought in September from a local craft market when we were on holiday in Dollgellau. The person we bought it from told us at length about a recent visit to A&E which included a 16 hour wait to be seen. So I suppose our theme this year is the imminent collapse of the NHS.
Can’t post mine yet – it still has the M&S wrapper on it.
We have a cake and coffee shop in our family. It’s in Edinburgh at 116 Causewayside, Newington and is called Kate’s. Everything freshly made daily, mostly seasonal and sourced locally.
Kate got over 20 orders in late November. Her mum made all the cakes and my other half did the marzipan, icing and decoration. I wanted to be chief taster but I am about 10th in line. I think there were 3 extra so she served one up in the shop. It was gone before lunchtime along with the other 2.
Too late, I’ve ate it.
Bought cake. Panettone, in multiple, as many as I can hang off my handlebars.
Same, got my panettone today, trying the limoncello variety this year! Also bought some torrone, which as a diabetic I probably should avoid even more than the panettone…but hey ho, Christmas comes but once a year, right? 🙁
The most important debate for Italian families at Christmas:
https://www.elle.com/it/cucina/news/a1254136/panettone-o-pandoro-quale-preferisci/
My niece literally can’t stomach orange in any form, so I have to source, and sample of course, alternative varieties each year. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it, etc etc.
I take my hat off to you, Cheshire. What dedication there is on the AW!
Vulpes! Your cake looks fab.
@Locust last week I bought a small “English fruitcake” from Gunnarsson’s bakery at the Skanstull end of Götgatan.
Here for your enjoyment is their shop window.
Delicious does not even begin to describe that fruitcake. I felt like an Australian puff adder who had just discovered both of her clitori and experienced a multiple orgasm on the shore of the billabong.
Goodness me. Christmas is coming.
Angry chocolate Santa looks like he’s getting ready to tear his coat open and give us a peek at Rudolf!
Fun fact, @Kaisfatdad, I used to work in the butcher shop that used to occupy the largest part of Gunnarsons back then – the bakery was only a small sliver of a shop back then, more like a corridor than a room…
Our shop window was all covered up with dozens of signs advertising the meat for sale in the shop (all painted by me).
Last week before Christmas was insanity, as five or six of us were chopping and slizing up all kinds of meat, queueing up for the meat saw and the slicer and the packing station and the scales in a very small area behind the counter (sometimes nipping into the walk-in refrigerator to fish out a pork knuckle or a tongue from the huge brine tub) while a hoard of customers shouted out their orders when their number was called.
After days like that I’d get home and feel like I’d been beaten with a big stick all day. The shop had it’s charm, but health and safety rules were not in effect!
Thanks for that glimpse of your back pages, @Locust. You’ve done some varied jobs in your time.
I find it difficult to imagine an old school butcher on Götgatan. (Gunnarsson’s seems to have been for decades.) The only place to find them now are in the saluhall (covered markets).
If the H & S was so bad, it’s probably a good thing the butcher closed down!
“His Rudolf”?
You’ve completely ruined that song for me now.
Nobody much liked Christmas cake in our family – except for the late Mrs thep who liked it fried in brandy butter on Boxing Day – so I’m relaxed about its absence from the Aussie Yuletide. I do like panettone and stollen though.
The late Mrs P’s idea sounds fantastic. Frying stuff in brandy butter, why haven’t I heard of this before? Where’s me skillet…
Have you never had a slice of clootie dumpling, fried in bacon fat, for breakfast, Moose? This could be a seasonal variation!
Are you trying to kill me?
I know you are, it was a rhetorical question.
Mrs Moose is from the north east and her clootie dumplings are exceptional etc
Oh, I say!
No, wait: that should read “michtie me!”
Mrs M actually announced today that she wants to get much better at making pastry.
I’m pretty clear that she’s finally had enough and is going to try and get rid of me. Enjoy my postings while you can. That’s what I told her etc
Put on the skillet!
No pictures but this has prompted me that I need to finish mine. Baked it back in October and have been drizzling it with brandy every other week. Need to do the marzipan and icing this week.
Don’t forget to leave 24 hours after the marzipan before you slap on the icing.
…but what if the marzipan is going somewhere really interesting? You might miss it.
Us too…Mrs. T baked the cake and has been feeding it with brandy, and will be marzipanning today and iced over the weekend, when it is passed to me for decorating. Picture to follow!
Feeding it with brandy? Brave, because then it keeps you awake all night with its singing and offering everybody a fight….
Could be worse. A tequila-soaked cake would probably pull a knife on you.
Marzipan, bleurgh.
Merry Christmas!
Marzipan Bleurgh is a promising milennial singer-songwriter who’s probably doing well in the AW poll.
Croatian bagpiper. Not many of them left now.
I thought he was Alabaster DePlume’s second cousin.
I like a bit of marzipan – I used to claim all the strips that people had carefully removed from their bits of Christmas cake…
Me too, yummy stuff. On my cake as seen above, the marzipan layer is the same thickness as the icing; almost 1cm. I’ll happily swap anyone my icing layer for their marzipan one.
Marzipan is one of things I cannot imagine anyone not liking! I always find a chocolate covered marzipan bar in my stocking on Christmas morning and it is lucky to last until breakfast.
No pictures but it’s approaching its final feed tomorrow, then I’ll make the marzipan on Sunday. I‘m not much of a decorator, so I tend to rely on my mum’s old kitschy Christmas scenes, and a sheet of homemade fondant icing made from melted marshmallow.
Mmmmmmm, ‘melted marshmallow’ eh? I must try that next year!
Finally decorated! Merry Christmas everyone!!