Revisiting old favourites with a Christmas twist!

There are so many recipes that look worth baking that I often find myself looking for the next new thing forgetting what has been enjoyed in the past. Sometimes however, it’s worth taking time out to revisit old favourites.

There is very little in the cake world more comforting than a slice of sponge with buttercream. Here’s the proof:


Plus, it’s a good thing to make over an extended holiday period as it keeps very well.

I made a Genoese sponge with buttercream in the shape of a Christmas tree.



This is exactly the same recipe as I used for my nephew’s birthday cake back in September. Follow this link for the recipes.

How can you celebrate without biscuits and dipping sauce? Well, the obvious answer is that you can’t. So I made those too. The Christmas twist here is that I used star shape cutters of decreasing size to build a biscuit tree. Try not to look at the tins of Weightwatchers soup in the background - the sad and bleak necessity of worshipping at the altar of cake!


Here’s my arty aerial shot in homage to the Esther Williams films of the 1940s and 50s (No, I’m not that old but Channel 4 used to show them in the afternoon before Countdown back in my student days so I often saw the last ten minutes or so.)


The biscuits can be decorated however you please, I used piped icing and M&Ms for the baubles. Follow this link for the recipes

I was quite ambitious this time and managed to get my tree to 30cm in height (that’s 12 inches or a foot for those of you still working in old money!). We live in a sceptical age so here is photographic evidence - I removed the soup tins in this one!:


This is a sight that will cheer me in the coming months: the Christmas tea table. The santa bowl contains sweetened cream (double cream lightly whipped and sweetened with icing sugar plus a dash of vanilla) and the dish with the little cupcakes dangling from it contains the magical dipping sauce!