Christmas village cake

Happy New Year!! I hope you’ve all had a fabulous time and overindulged as much as I have!!

So I thought I should let you know how the Christmas Village cake turned out. Well, the fruit cake actually turned out quite nicely seeing as I had no idea what I was doing really and even I quite liked it. My daughter kept insisting that the fruit I was soaking to make it should be thrown away, as it “had a big smell”!! I tried to explain that it was supposed to smell like that, but it is just for grown-ups, however she was most concerned about whether Father Christmas would like it, “but does Father Christmas like alcohol???”…………………

Anyway, once it was a bit closer to Christmas I made a chocolate cake and a gingerbread cake as well and began to build my cake houses. The original plan was to have a main house (fruit cake) and then some mini sponge houses (which I had a special mini house mould for) around the outside; however once I’d stacked up the fruit cake house, iced it and given it a roof, I still had a lot of cake left. So rather than scrap it (which really means eat it all!!!) and make more for mini houses I decided to construct another big house.

This cake was also the first time I have attempted making figures myself, so be kind and don’t laugh too much!!!  I must admit that by about midnight on Christmas Eve when I was still decorating it, I was cursing myself for not at least buying the tree!! Oh well, by the early hours of the morning it was done and although not quite how I’d imagined it; I’d really enjoyed making it and got to try out lots of new things for the first time, so it was most definitely one to learn from!!