christmas decoration cake (attempt no.1 + 2)

attempt 1 

attempt 2

Christmas is fast approaching, ish, it's still more than a month away, but I suppose some of us do get ahead of ourselves sometimes. 

This is a visually nice looking cake, easy to make, but does take quite a lot of time making all the different components and assembling them. Most of the components used here have been covered by previous blog posts, so I'll simply put a link to the ones I've covered already. As each person has their own way of decorating things, I'll leave out the detailed decoration instructions and leave that to your imagination!

Macaroons: http://bakingscience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/macaroons-for-those-who-are-struggling.html
Profiteroles: http://bakingscience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/chocolate-cream-profiteroles-cream.html
Caramel: http://bakingscience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/caramel-and-caramel-sauce.html

Ingredients 
victoria sponge

• 220g caster sugar
• 220g unsalted butter
• 220g self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs

1. Line a 20cm x 40cm (or similar size) baking tray with baking parchment
2. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C 
3. Cream sugar, butter, baking powder and flour together
4. Add one egg at a time to the mixture and mix until combined and then add the next egg, etc until all the eggs have been added
5. Mix in vanilla extract
6. Put all the batter into the baking tray and bake for 30-35 minutes
7. The cake is done when you press the sponge gently and it springs back, and when poked with a knife, it comes out clean

Chocolate and cinnamon cookies

• 125g unsalted butter
• 75g icing sugar
• 130g plain flour
• 40g coco powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon 

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees C
2. Mix butter and icing sugar together until the mixture is fluffy
3. Sift flour and coco powder into the mixture and knead into a smooth dough
4. Roll out the dough to about 3mm thick 
5. Cut out your rolled out dough into desired shapes (you will need to do the measurements beforehand)
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes 

Marzipan candy sticks
You don't actually need a recipe for this, it's quite straight forward really.

1. Get some marzipan, and some red sugar paste
2. Roll each of them out into a long strip
3. Twist them together and roll again and shape it into a candy stick!