A creative cake for Advent or Christmas

Let the Christmas season inspire you to get baking

December birthdays and German kugelhopf cakes inspired this Advent wreath cake. You can make it for the first or last Sunday of Advent and it works as a birthday cake. Or you could make this as a Christmas cake seeing as all of the candles on the wreath are lit on Christmas day. Make any flavour cake you want!

Equipment

  • Holly leaf cutters
  • Ivy cutters
  • Daisy cutters (for the poinsettia flowers)
  • Edible gold lustre
  • Woodland green lustre
  • Moss green lustre
  • Frosty holly lustre
  • Mexican modelling paste (gumpaste)
  • Christmas green colour paste
  • Red extra colour paste
  • Unused artist’s paint palette
  • 9 inch bundt tin greased and lined
  • Candles

For the cake

  • 180g self-raising flour
  • 225g light muscovado sugar
  • 225g butter softened
  • 100g dark mint flavoured chocolate, melted
  • 4 eggs lightly beaten
  • 200ml natural yogurt

For the buttercream

  • 200g unsalted butter softened
  • 250g icing sugar sifted
  • 2-3 drops of peppermint extract
  • Christmas Green food colouring

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure the bowl doesn’t come into direct contact with the water. Once melted, leave aside to cool

Cream together the butter and sugar for five minutes until light and fluffy. Slowly add the eggs with two tablespoons of the flour, beating well after each addition. Gently fold in the rest of the flour, the yogurt and finally the cooled chocolate mixture.

Pour into the cake pan and bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes until a skewer emerges clean. Remove from the oven and leave in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool. Once cool chill in the fridge for one hour so icing it will be made easier.

For the buttercream, beat the butter and icing sugar together for five minutes until pale and fluffy. Add a few drops of peppermint extract and a teaspoon of the Christmas green food colouring. Beat again until the colour is even.

Transfer the cake to a serving plate and spread a thin layer of buttercream all around the sides of the cake, including the inside of the ring. Spoon the rest of the icing into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle and pipe the pine needles all around the cake. Place in the fridge for one hour to harden the buttercream.

For the sugar leaves and flowers, colour some Mexican modelling paste using the green food colouring and colour a small amount using the red food colouring. Roll each colour out as thinly as possible and cut out the flowers and leaves. Place the shapes in a paint palette to mould their shape and leave to dry for a few hours or overnight. Mix the moss green lustre with some of the frost holly and brush onto the ivy leaves. Mix the woodland green with the frost holly and brush onto the holly leaves. Pipe little dots using royal icing into the centre of each red poinsettia. Leave to dry and then paint with edible gold lustre.

Arrange the sugar leaves and flowers around the top of the cake. When arranging the holly, position two or three leaves together and place three edible red pearls for each set of three leaves. Push the candles into the cake.