Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa Cake

The luscious white chocolate butter cream piped beard is irresistible to all ages.

INGREDIENTS (SERVES 12)

◆ 1 medium dome cake

◆ 75g white chocolate

◆ 125g butter

◆ 225g icing sugar

◆ 1 tsp vanilla essence

◆ 250g pink fondant icing

◆ 250g red fondant icing

◆ 125g white fondant icing

◆ 25g black fondant icing

◆ 4-5 tbsp apricot jam

1 For the buttercream, gently melt the chocolate. Beat the butter, sifted icing sugar and vanilla essence until light and soft.

2 Fold in the chocolate and cover the buttercream in a cool place. Put the cake on the icing turntable.

3 Roll the pink fondant to a 32cm diameter semi circle. Test the size against the dome tin to ensure it covers just over half.

4 Roll a red fondant semi-circle, as above. Roll a white 32cm x 5 cm band for Santa’s hat and emboss using a snowflake cutter. 5 Roll a hat bobble from the white trimmings and emboss with a snowflake. Roll a nose from the pink trimmings and a mouth from the red.

6 Roll a red fondant triangle with two 20cm edges and one 10cm edge. Fold into fabric-like drapes for the end of the hat and refrigerate to firm.

7 Brush the cake with jam and fix the pink and red semi circles over the cake, smoothing out folds and trimming around the base.

8 Brush a little jam on the back of the hatband and fix in place to cover the join. Put a little jam on the triangle for the hat and fix in place.

9 Roll balls of black fondant (or white coloured with food dye) for the eyes. Fix the mouth and eyes in place using jam.

10 Put the buttercream in a piping bag and ice an extravagant beard and moustache. Store in the fridge in an airtight box.