I'm making 2 christmas cakes this year (1st time!) 1 for me and one for a gift. Both of us hate marzipan so I want to try and ice it without. I've got apricot jam to glaze it ( I assume I just warm it and spread?) and I've got regular icing sugar and dried egg whites, I also bought royal icing sugar which I think already has egg whites in. Also a tube of glycerine for good measure! I'm not keen on using raw egg whites in an icing that is going to be kept for a while hence the powder.
Any advice? will it work? should I use royal icing or some kind of frosting instead? Help!
thanks!

The marzipan seals the cake and keeps it moist.  It also provides a flat surface for icing.  If you were to use royal icing then it would stain quite quickly...

If you don't like marzipan, the absence of which makes icing really difficult, then I'd opt for a 'Dundee' style and use nuts or other fruit , such as glade cherries, to decorate it.

I'm the opposite - I find the icing a bit boring and too sweet but would happily just have marzipan!!

I'm not that keen on eating icing............but it looks nice and I want something to stick the father Christmas and the ridiculously OTT cake decs in! :)

I don't like that answer, but unfortunately I think you may be right! Thanks, I suppose I could experiment with one and give away the most successful!
(BTW don't like nuts either....................... Picky pair we are!!)
Thanks for the help

I don't like marzipan either, but you can get white marzipan which tastes a lot milder.

You could seal the cake with a thin layer of icing - then re-ice it, which might provide a measure of protection from staining

However, I subsequently found a Delia Smith response to your exact question!  "Can you ice a Christmas cake without using marzipan?  Yes. If you paint the cake with apricot jam, you can use a fondant icing and just fix it on with the jam"

Another option would be to wrap it in edible sliver or gold sheets - if you want to be extravagant :)

Have fun.  I'm dieting and think I should give the cake a miss this year :(

I love doing my cake.  Don't know about not putting marzipan on, i love it.  Fondents been suggested already, I'd use the royal icing but don't add the glycerine unless the box says so.  I can't remember adding egg white.  Its very safe if you do.  You have to be careful that its not too hard.

Hi, i do alot of cakes, for hobby and making a bit of money on the side (shhh lol) but i dont do many fruit cakes im afraid!!! But what i would do is use a thin layer of sugarpaste (fondant for the Americans lol) after you have used the warm apricot glaze. Let that skin for a few hours. Then gently brush every bit of it with vodka and whilst still damp apply another layer of sugarpaste. This is purely for looks wise, if not just stick to the 1 thickish layer if you dont mind lumps and bumps! Also another little tip, turn the cake upside to so you have a perfectly flat top!! Fill in the 'roundedness' at the bottom with sausages of paste........i think this makes sense haha good luck and enjoy!! x

thanks all!
right, I've decided to chance the manky brown bits and ice straight onto a coating of apricot jam. I'm so confused with the different icings though! I've only ever done sponge cake before with soft icing and I want this to be fairly hard. What is sugar paste? is that the same as fondant icing? and I just looked and I bought liquid glucose not glycerine. I like the idea of royal icing as I don't have to kneed and roll it, Do I have to roll fondant?? eek, this sounded so much simpler when I thought of it !
thank you!

Royal Icing uses raw egg white and is the traditional english icing - used on wedding cakes - which dries hard

Fondant Icing also uses egg white but is a softer more mouldable icing which can be formed into fancy shapes - yes you will knead (not much but satisfying!) and fold this one

However you can also buy ready made fondant icing which you just roll and stick on - same stuff but no kneading

Sugarpaste (fondant, same thing but british term) is a soft icing which is what you would find on a birthday cake these days. You can buy it in most supermarkets and can even buy it ready rolled if you want to really cheat haha. Generally though, if you have a local sugarcraft shop it would be much cheaper and nicer!

Edited to add, although Royal Icing is much nicer, its much much harder to do!!!

I wonder why fondant icing is supposed to stain less? peculiar! I don;t suppose you have a fondant icing recipe you'd care to share? :) the internet seems to be full of ones with strange American ingredients I don't have!
I have just found a bottle of Glycerine in my cupboard that was bought for sore throats. I'm not sure if it is the same as cooking stuff though.
BTW I am on a diet too (WW) but I've decided Christmas warrants a calorie amnesty! I was going to be good and restrained till 24th december but as I just consumed an entire pot of pringles washed down with a vast amount of coke I think that ship has sailed :s

Sorry gotta be quick - I'm supposed to be making tea in the ad break!

Fondant Icing - this one is the same as one I have

> strange American ingredients

Maybe worth asking here if anyone knows what they are, or Google them. They are often just different names for things we have here, or we have substitutes.

I've always found this website really helpful - The Cook's Thesaurus

Mum always used to make Royal Icing from scratch, I'll ask her to dig out the recipe tomorrow. As kids it was our job to help her decorate the cake, using our strange collection of plastic Christmas cake ornaments dating from the 1950's... so we'd have father Christmas on skis complete with ski tracks, gliding through mini fir trees surrounded by giant reindeer! You could create any texture in it which hid a multitude of sins; I suppose it fell out of favour when Artex came in, as there was a similarity!!! (Who wants their cake to match the ceiling). She then used to make Fondant icing and still does if she feels up to it, but usually just gives in and buys the ready rolled stuff you can get now.

Can't stand icing (too sweet for me) although it does look lovely :)  

I'm another who'd happily munch on marzipan, even without the cake, but OH HATES the stuff  :(

So I usually make a Dundee type cake decorated with nuts and fruit.   Last year I brushed the nuts and fruit with GOLD DUST :-p   It looked gorgeous, really festive :)

Another one who doesn't like marzipan so what I've done a few times is get white marzipan, roll it out to tissue-paper thinness so you can practically see through it, which is enough to stop crumbs and colour getting to the icing and then ice onto that.
You need egg whites for royal icing to make it set hard.
Chris

agilabs, why don't you use fondant icing to decorate, or is it that you are absolutely sold on royal icing? Fondant is less temperamental than royal icing and you may be able to able to apply a thin apricot glaze to 'fix' it onto the cake and then if you want to you can use royal icing to decorate that. Royal icing really needs a barrier like marzipan or fondant underneath it, otherwise the fat content of the cake will create oily patches--that's why the marzipan needs to dry first before you apply coasts of royal icing, which is best down in layers (a bit like plaster, you lay down a thin 'rough' coat and then follow with a super smooth, less stiff coat to really achieve the super smooth surface pictured in books and magazines.

Royal icing sugar won't contain egg white unless it specifically says so (like the 'instant' mixes)--it's just superfine, probably with more anti caking stuff in it and possibly a bit of cream of tartar to get the icing to really stiffen up.

You can make you own fondant, but it is far less hassle to nip along to a good baker who will sell you what you need. The glycwerine is exactly what you'd get form the pharmacy. It gives the mix its pliability so that you can smooth away any wrinkles and stops it from cracking.

I jumped in a t the deep end with all of this a lot of years ago by making my own wedding cake from beginning to end, including the fondant, marzipan and pastillage. I'd say that unless there's a good reason for wanting to do it, you can biy a better product by the kilo or parts thereof and save a huge amount of icing sugar mess everywhere :-)

Any questions about cake decorating or US ingredients, just ask :-)

Thanks everybody!
Cake is successfully iced with home-made fondant (used the recipe in DAB's link) having first coated with Apricot jam. It looks good so far, if it does start to stain before Xmas I'll peel off the various dec's and icing models and chuck another coat of something on top. I'm hopeful it won't be necessary, I don't like boozy cakes so it wasn't as wet and sticky as some and I also slightly over-warmed my apricot jam so it was starting to thicken so it set to quite a good coating. I'll definitely use fondant again, like playing with play-doh again, the icing snowmen might be a little childish but it is fun to do!

For future reference, anyone know what corn syrup is? it appears in a lot of the American versions I found.

Corn syrup is a sweetener usually used in making candy because unlike sugar it doesn't crystallise, but you find it in recipes for things like brownies--basically anything that has a chewy, fudgy texture. It used to drive me crazy that I couldn't find it here, but I think I have been able to find it at Sainsburys recently. I have heard you can substitute things like golden syrup but I would be very sceptical--they have totally different consistencies and taste.

I don't much like the icing and I can't stand fruit cake - but I love the marzipan! My f-i-l likes the icing but not the marzipan, so we gang up and steal bits and peel the icing and marzipan apart. :-D If I'm lucky, my m-i-l remembers to save a bit of marzipan just for me.

My brother was the only one in our house who would eat Marzipan so our mum used to just give it to him in the block!

Whenever a recipe asks for corn syrup, Golden Syrup is the UK equivelent.

I know they say that, but golden syrup is a completely different animal :-)