The Wedding of the Year had a cake competition which I won! An amazing result and not entirely fair as the bride's mother made the real winner, a spectacular three tiered creation with uncannily recognisable models of the bride, groom and child on top, as you can see. But this wonderful thing was not entered in the competition, and so my sad looking bridal wreath won a fabulous prize. It was the Christmas Ring Cake recipe, made a little more springlike with crystallized mango and pineapple replacing nearly all of of the peel and cherries which are such winter ingredients. This recipe, of course, came from my mother, as she was keen to remind everyone when it won. I iced it with the lemon icing below and decorated it with crystallized rose petals. If you ever want to use this simple trick, don't choose buds. I did, just to get the right colour to match the bride's orange dress(itself a wonder) but as a result, the petals were too small to carry the egg white and sugar. Instead of being fresh and crisply pretty, they were soggy and just flopped. Still the tasting went well and proved how successful, and adaptable, this recipe is.
Decorative Rose Petals
Just separate the petals out carefully.
Then brush each one on both sides with beaten egg white using a pastry brush and a light hand.
Have a plate of castor sugar ready and dip each petal side by side into it so that it is coated.
Spread them out on greaseproof paper to dry and use within 24 hours. Scatter on an iced cake, securing with a little extra icing if it has already dried.
Best Lemon Icing
4 oz icing sugar
the grated rind of 1/2 lemon
1/2 oz melted butter
1 tbs lemon juice
1 dsp single cream (or double, whipping, or in extremis, milk)
Sieve the icing sugar and mix to a paste with the other ingredients. Add more lemon or cream to get it the right pouring consistency for your purposes. This is enough to just cover a cake, the ring one or perhaps, a ginger cake.
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