Stars and Sparkle Christmas Tree Cake

 You will need:

1 x Cake, marzipanned and covered with white sugarpaste, instructions on how to here

Sugarpaste, white and dark blue

Small sugarpaste star cutters  and medium star cutters

Silver balls

Edible cake sparkles in white

Begin by rolling out the dark blue sugarpaste on your worksurface lightly dusted with icing sugar or cornflour to prevent it sticking.

If you have a large enough circular cutter cut out a large circle for the top of the cake, if you don’t (I really don’t know why I do!) Use a plate to cut around.  Don’t worry too much about the state of the edge, it will be covered as part of the decoration!

Using a paintbrush dampen the top of the cake with a little water.

I use a nifty water pens for cake decorating, they hold the water in the chamber of the pen (a)  I use these because 1. They’re dead easy to use 2. Children steal paintbrushes!

Lift the dark blue sugarpaste circle into place centrally on the cake and smooth the surface gently with the palm of your hand.

Now take the white sugarpaste and roll out nice and thinly on your lightly dusted work surface.  Using all these cutters stamp out a million stars in all sorts of sizes, you’ll need plenty to be working with.  It helps to dust the cutters lightly with icing sugar or cornflour and will stop the sugarpaste star from sticking in there.

Leave the stars to one side for a few minutes to start to firm up.  They are much easier to handle and don’t pull out of shape once they have dried for a short while.

A note on plunger cutters – make sure the sugarpaste you are going to cut out is not stuck to the surface first.  Cut out the shape pressing right down to the worktop/table.  Keeping the contact between surface and cutter jiggle it about to get a nice clean cut.  Release the contact and press down the plunger to eject the star.

For the non-plunger cutters, if the star gets stuck in poke it with the wrong end of a paintbrush, against the very edge of the star to help release it.  If you poke in the centre it will end up with a mark.

Cut yourself a triangle christmas tree template out of a piece of paper.  Lay it onto the cake and mark around it with some pin pricks – these will guide you when it comes to filling with stars.

Applying tiny dabs of water start lifting the stars randomly into position and secure in place with a light press of the finger.  Start at the top and work your way down.  Alternate the size of the stars as you go.

When you get to the bottom add in a couple of stars for the Christmas trees trunk.

Now in the gaps of the stars using the wrong end of paint brush make a little indent, add a dab of water and then drop in a silver ball.  A light press of your fingertip should secure it in place.

Now cut out some more large and medium stars, you will need a fair few!

Position them around the outside of the dark blue circle, overlapping them onto the white of the cake in alternating size order.  Secured again with a dab of water.

Add silver balls between the stars, both on the blue and on the white using the same technique as you did for the christmas tree.

Finally finish with a  sprinkling of holographic white sparkles to the tree and trim with a lovely ribbon.

Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire