When it comes to Christmas, are you trendy or traditional?
Personally I'm a little on the trendy side. I absolutely love Christmas, it's my favourite time of the year! I'm so nuts about it that I have different colour themes each year. This 2010 Christmas, my tree is adorned with ornaments in colours of lime, aquamarine, teal and silver. Last year it was burgundy and silver. The year before (my first year in Ireland) was white and silver.
I normally think of my colours long before the festive season begins and as soon as Christmas decorations hit the shops, I start buying ornaments in my chosen colours for the year.
This year's trendy colours that can be found in every store selling decorations in Ireland are cerise pink and deep purple. I love those colours but I think Andrew would probably have moved out if I'd done the tree up in these colours, they are a little on the girlie side (but I do have a little tree in my edit suite at work with pinks and purples to enjoy for myself ;) )
I like to do things a little differently, but there are a lot of traditional colour lovers out there. I'd mentioned my colour scheme to two of the girls in the office, the one said she just loved the sound of it, the other said that wasn't for her, she liked her greens, reds and golds.
This had me thinking about what I wanted to do for a Christmas post.
Cut up to make cute mini cakes
I'm entering this Mini Christmas Cakes post into the Most Wanted Yule-Blog competition. The rules are pretty simple, make something that's the epitome of Christmas, either using seasonal ingredients or decorated festively.
At first I had the idea of doing mini cakes that look like little gifts in the trendy colours of this Christmas, pinks and purples. Then the idea evolved, as they normally do, and in the end I've decided to cater both for the trendy and for the traditional, in appearance and taste.
Moist Devil's Food Cake with creamy ganache filling and covered in berry fondant
I bought some gorgeous real fruit fondant mixes from Squires Kitchen that I thought would go perfectly for the trendy. Using the purple blackcurrant and the pink raspberry and strawberry, they're the perfect colours and the berry flavours will go beautifully with what I want to put inside. Chocolate cake! Not traditionally Christmas at all, but that's ok, these are the trendy! In between the layers I've put a simple but luxurious chocolate ganache.
Rich fruit cake with marzipan and covered with almond fondant
Now for the traditional. Green, red and white "gifts" with fondant flavoured with orange, lemon and almond. The inside of these lovely little pressies is rich fruit cake. In between the layers, marzipan. You can't get more traditionally Christmas than that!
Either serve these as dessert after your Christmas meal or they'll make lovely Christmas gifts for neighbours, friends, family and anyone else you want to spread the festive season cheer to.
Freshly baked rich fruit cake
In this busy month you might not have as much time to spend on making everything from scratch so to save a bit of time you can buy an undecorated fruitcake and/or a chocolate sponge cake (although I would recommend making your own chocolate sponge).
Use a fondant mix that only requires adding water, and the same goes for the royal icing. You can also look for ready made decorations to top your little gifts if you don't think you'll have the time to made your own bows and labels.
These can be fun to make but also not take as much time as when you make everything yourself from scratch.
Because this post has two cake recipes as well as everything else that goes with it, I've put the decorations, Trendy and Traditional in their own posts within this journal so that you're not scrolling down for miles.
So whether you're trendy or traditional, there's a Mini Christmas Cake for you.
Merry Christmas and enjoy!
