Stir-up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent, which is the traditional start of the Christmas season, and falls on 24 Nov (today) this year. The name came from the collect for the day from the Book of Common Prayer which begins: "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord ..." and traditionally this is the day for the whole family to involve in mixing up all ingredients to make a Christmas cake/pudding ♡
I believe decorating Christmas cakes like these baubles will steal the show at the festive table ☃ these designs were inspired by Makis Cake.
Bauble Cakes
I am using madeira cake as demonstration, you can use any other cake recipe.Ingredients
Madeira cake
(makes 6 baubles)
250g butter, at room temperature
250g caster sugar
4 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp vanilla bean extract
5 tbsp milk
350g self-raising flour
60g raspberry jam (or any jam or ganache of your choice)
Buttercream
250g butter
500g icing sugar
2 tbsp vanilla bean extract
Decoration
1kg fondant
assorted food colour gel
royal icing
edible lustre dust
edible glitter
Utensils
2 x Silicone Half Sphere Mould, each sphere is 7cm diameter (you can find this in amazon or ebay)
Method
To make the cake:
1. Preheat oven to 170C. Lightly grease the half sphere mould.
2. Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Gradually add in the eggs and milk.
3. Sift the flour into the mixture, beat until the mixture is well incorporated.
4. Spoon the mixture into the mould. Bake in the oven for 25 mins until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
5.
Remove from the oven and set aside to cool completely. Gently turn them
out from the mould to avoid them from sticking, put them back into the
mould and chill in the fridge for 30 mins.
6. Remove from the fridge. Carefully core out the centre of each cake and fill some jam inside. Set aside.
To make the buttercream:
7. Beat butter until fluffy, gradually beat in icing sugar and vanilla extract.
To decorate:
8. Sandwich the cake sphere with some buttercream, chill in the fridge for 30 mins until set and two sphere are stick together.
9. Ice the whole cake balls with a layer of buttercream, chill in the fridge for 1 hour or preferably overnight until set.
10.
On a clean surface, lightly dust some corn flour/icing sugar, colour a
portion of fondant with a tiny little bit of colour gel. Knead the
fondant until the colour become consistent. Roll out the fondant and cut
a disc out that is a bit larger than the cake diameter, cover the cake
with fondant. Repeat with other colour and cover the rest of cake with
fondant.
11. Leave the iced cake to dry for a few hours.
12. Brush some lustre dust onto the cake balls. Decorate and pipe with some royal icing.
