Adventures in Sugarland: Christmas Cake 2012 including 3D Christmas Tree tutorial

Well, this is my Christmas Cake for 2012. My boys asked for a snowman cake, so here we have some 3D Christmas Trees made using a snowflake cutter and a little snowman atop a rough iced royal icing covered cake. It has been such a busy few weeks getting everything ready fro Christmas I have not had much chance to hit the blogosphere . I am determined to publish this post before Christmas, so without further ado, here it is

3D Christmas Trees

What you need

Sugar flower paste / gum paste coloured dark green

Snowflake cutter - I used one by PME

Sugarcraft ball tool or a small round cutter. (Or you could use the narrow end of a small icing nozzle)

A few lengths of uncooked spaghetti

The 3D Christmas trees are built out of snowflakes cut out with the PME snowflake cutter you can see below. Start by rolling out the sugar flower paste to about the width of a £1 coin. Don't roll it too thin as you need the branches to have some strength.

Cut out the green sugar flower paste with the snowflake plunger cutter. You don't need to press the plunger down to emboss the pattern, as this won't be seen in the finished trees, but if you do, it makes it easier to find the centre in the next stage Cut two or three each of the three sizes for each tree.

Use a small ball tool, or round cutter or the thin end of a plain round icing nozzle to make a hole in the centre of the snowflake

Leave your snowflakes to dry for about 24 hours, then brush them over with a little lustre. I used Frosted Holly by Sugarflair. (Love the difference this lustre makes)

Now you are ready to start to stack the green snowflakes. Start by making a trunk out of brown sugar paste. (or use more green, it actually might look better if you use green). Push a length of spaghetti into the ball of sugar paste. I have used a toothpick as these trees weren't going to be eaten, but it is safer to use a length of uncooked spaghetti.

Carefully slide over the first and largest lustred snowflake, then slide a small bead of brown or green paste onto the cocktail stick to make a gap between the "leaves"

Build up alternating layers of beads and leaves, biggest at the bottom to smallest at the top. Stagger the branches on each alternate layer. I brushed the ends and edges of my branches with a little edible glue at this stage and sprinkled liberally with green edible glitter

Take a firm grip of the sides of the top of the spaghetti and push into your cake so only 5 mm or so sticks out at the top. Roll a tiny green ball of green and shape this to cover the end spaghetti. Once on the cake you can adjust the branches slightly if you need to. If the tree looks a bit squashed, just carefully raise the toothpick and it will rise up again.

You can make the Christmas tree look more Christmasssy by sticking a star on the top, or if you have loads of spare time on hour hands, stick sugar balls onto the branches for baubles. these trees make lovely cupcake toppers too.

In the picture below, the tree in the middle is made from three of each size of snowflake with small beads in-between and the two at the side are made from two of each size of snowflake with larger beads in-between

The Snowman

This lovely little snowman is from this one of Karen Davies' moulds. He has been painted with blue petal dust for the scarf and hat. The eyes, mouth and buttons have been painted with gel food colour, thinned with a little clear alcohol. I used rejuvenator, but you could use vodka. Here is his close-up