Ho! Ho! Ho!

By Allison Hay

This Santa cake really says Christmas! Use it as the centrepiece to your Christmas celebrations… and don’t miss the Robin version, too!

Serves: 8-10
Cooking time: 25-30min

Ingredients:

17cm medium hemisphere mould
200g butter, at room temperature
200g caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
200g self-raising flour

To decorate:

75g white chocolate
125g butter
225g icing sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
250g pink fondant icing
250g red fondant icing
125g white fondant icing
25g black fondant icing
4-5tbsp apricot jam
Cornflour for dusting the work surface
An icing turntable (optional)
A silicone nonslip mat marked with concentric circles cake sizes from www.lakeland.co.uk

To make:

Heat the oven to 180˚C, Fan Oven 160˚C, Gas Mark 4. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then add vanilla extract. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Sift the flour and fold into the mixture.
Spoon into the buttered and floured cake mould, level the top and bake for 25-30min, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Allow the cake to become completely cold before you decorate. If necessary use a sharp serrated knife to level the base of the cake.
To decorate, gently melt the white chocolate. Beat the butter, sifted icing sugar and vanilla essence until light and soft.
Fold in the white chocolate and cover the buttercream in a cool place. Put the cake on the icing turntable.
Roll the pink fondant on a worktop dusted with a little cornflour to prevent sticking until it measures a 32cm diameter semi circle. Test the size against the dome tin to ensure it covers just over half.
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.
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.
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.
Brush the cake with apricot jam – the jam can be warmed with 1tsp water to make it easier to brush over the cake – and fix the pink and red semi circles over the cake, smoothing out folds and trimming around the base.
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.
Roll balls of black fondant (or white coloured with food dye) for the eyes. Fix the mouth, nose and eyes in place using jam.
Put the buttercream in a piping bag and ice an extravagant beard and moustache. Store in the fridge in an airtight box.