A family of robins on our Christmas cake

I know I am very late posting about Christmas still but I wanted to share our Christmas cake for last year.

This year I decided I would do something a little different with our Christmas cake and make decorating the cake a family affair. So one morning we all sat down (including Mr Snowballs) and each of us made a little robin to sit on top of the cake.

I had already covered the fruit cake with marzipan and white fondant and added an icy blue pond and a big brown log.

The robins were very simple to make. All you need is:

- 1 x big ball of brown fondant (body)

- 2 x small balls of brown fondant (wings)

- 1 x medium ball red fondant (chest)

- 1 x large ball red fondant (hat)

- 1 x small ball yellow fondant (beak)

- 1 x medium ball white fondant (hat fur)

- 1 x small ball white fondant (hat bobble)

- edible glue/ cooled boiled water/ vodka!

1. Take the big ball of brown fondant and flatten slightly on the bottom so the robin stands up.

2. Flatten the two small balls of brown fondant to make the wings and attach to the sides of the robin's body using the glue/water/vodka.

3. Flatten the medium ball of red fondant and attach to the robin's body for the red chest.

4. Shape the yellow fondant into a beak and attach to the robin's body at the top of the red breast.

5. Slightly flatten the medium ball of white fondant to create the fur trim on the hat.

6. Shape the large ball of red fondant into a cone and bend the top over to create a Christmas hat shape.

7. Attach the small ball of white fondant to the end of the hat.

8. Using a cocktail stick (or similar pointy object) give your robin some eyes!

We also made a fir tree using a large cone of dark green fondant and a pair of scissors to create the texture (by making small cuts in an upward direction around the tree) and covered it in dark green glitter, It was topped with a gold star (fixed to the tree using a small piece of dried spaghetti). The pond was coated with piping gel to make it look icy and the robins were placed around it.

Finally, we added little brown branches, holly leaves and berries around the bottom of the cake and a sprinkling of glitter and icing sugar for snow.

The Snowball family did a great job with each of their robins and I hope this will become a new family tradition  - next year penguins or polar bears? What do you think?

© 2015 Nicola Noble & Little Love Cakes: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.