cake crisis?

Honestly, I may have bitten off more than I can chew this year. Got carried away with Christmas enthusiasm in September and decided to make not only our Christmas cake, but also wee ones for my parents, brother and sister/bro-in-law. Seemed like a good idea at the time and the cakes were duly made and carefully wrapped up to keep.

Come last week and the juggling of what to do when to get everything done in time kicked in - with baking, cards, shopping and wrapping, house decorating etc. Thus all the cakes were duly marzipanned on Monday night and sat waiting for their coating of royal icing.

Yesterday was a hectic rush round the shops to try to get cake decorations (thought of everything else but not that!) and last night, the kitchen clear, I set to work.

Now I'm not a creative person so despite all the cake decorations was never going to end up with beautiful looking concoctions. But it turned out to be harder than I thought -

First cake - happened to check the date on the glycerin (which helps keep the icing soft) - it was 2 years out of date! oops. Oh well, as it was only our cake, I carried on. Then - oh oh, I need 2 egg white (medium). I only have eggs (large). So it was a bit of guess work trying to use one and a half egg whites. The result - a nicely iced cake but lord knows whether we'll be able to get into it after a few days!

Second cake - oh oh, running out of glycerin. Cue a 45 minute trip round all the local supermarkets to return with - nothing. Naebody has glycerin! Sigh. Oh well, will have to make it with royal icing sugar instead (always a bit hit or miss, I find). However, it seemed to go OK. By which I mean that so far, the icing hasn't rolled off the cake!

Third cake - noooo! Run out of royal icing sugar now! Patched it with the remains of cake 2's icing and finished up the glycerin with a half batch of icing made the traditional way. Looks ok - phew!

Fourth cake - ehhh, no. Not happening. No glycerin, no royal icing sugar = no icing. So cake 4 is currently still sitting in its marzipan, no doubt feeling a little nude beside it's festooned siblings.

The great glycerin hunt is on!