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Why may I ask are you covering the cake in BOTH marzipan and fondant?? My opinion is it should really be one or the other as it will be awfully sweet with both, not to mention the extra expense of two coverings. My Mom was Scottish, and Brits don't use buttercream, but marmalade on the cake 1st when using marzipan. Let marmalade dry slightly, then on goes the marzipan. It would stick to the marmalade. I have covered a cake in marzipan, but I used buttercream underneath. As with fondant, not everyone likes it, so it may not be eaten. Another expense seeing it is being thrown away.
If you are going to use marzipan only, buy a the best quality you can afford, the cheap stuff is very sticky and hard to work with. Good marzipan can be expensive.
Hope this helps
thanx June. I don't normally eat fruit cake, but made this cake for my mums birthday as it's one of her fav cakes. A few weeks ago a friend made a wheat and gluten free fruit cake (as i try to keep to this way of eating) and it had marzipan and fondant on, and am sure thats what all fruit cakes over here has on it. i don't normally put marzipan on cakes, cos as you said not every1 likes it, but know my mum likes it and as its for her,so i put it on. thanx for getting back to me anyway. x
Geez Amanda
I should have checked where u were from!! Dah!!!!! From Fife, Scotland....you would know abou this stuff. I was going to say in my original message that it traditionally goes on fruitcake. There are mostly American's on this site and they don't know much about marzipan. I see Linda's post above, and never thought there would be a concise recipe for homemade marzipan.
So you about 3 hours from where my Mom was from. Stranraer. Haven't been there yet, but just retired and anxious to go to Scotland, & UK where I have one cousin left from my Mom's family.
Geez Amanda
I should have checked where u were from!! Dah!!!!! From Fife, Scotland....you would know abou this stuff. I was going to say in my original message that it traditionally goes on fruitcake. There are mostly American's on this site and they don't know much about marzipan. I see Linda's post above, and never thought there would be a concise recipe for homemade marzipan.
So you about 3 hours from where my Mom was from. Stranraer. Haven't been there yet, but just retired and anxious to go to Scotland, & UK where I have one cousin left from my Mom's family.
Covering a cake in buttercream before sugarpasting the cake is a purely American thing to do.
When Americans discovered Sugarpaste [aka rolled fondant which has deteriorated down to "fondant" the name of which is already taken by another product], they loved the "look", but hated the taste and texture. Because customers peeled the offending sugarpaste off, cake decorators felt duty bound to provide them with an "under-icing" to cover the now-naked cake. Buttercream under sugarpaste came into being .. double iced cakes ...
Marzipan was/is used as an undercoat. It protects the sugarpaste or royal icing from moisture, colours and oils rising from the fruitcake. Once applied, it is dried before the outer coat is applied. Sieved jam, sugar syrup or boiled water is used to attach the marzipan to the cake, and the same is used to attach the outer coating to the marzipan.
With today's newer formulations of sugarpaste, marzipan may be omitted. A thin layer of sugarpaste may be used in it's place: covered by a thicker outlayer.
Today's trend in AU decorating is ganache over mudcake, butter cake etc covered with sugarpaste. [Ganache is never applied to fruitcake.]
Growing up with a Scottish Mom, I always helped her make fruitcake @ Christmas. I hated it then, but love it now. I have her great-grandmother's recipe, that hopefully one day I will give a shot at making.
Anyway, she always covered her fruitcake with apricot jam, it dried, & then, like you said marzipan. Of course the cake was wrapped with cheesecloth soaked in rum 1st, in our case, apple juice. I still think that marzipan is superior to fondant in every way, but there are still a lot of people that still don't like it. And in Canada, even making marzipan from scratch is $$$$, so kind of wasteful if it is being thrown away. And you are also right that the Brits invented "fondant", only the correct name as you say, is sugarpaste. When I took lessons when my children were small, my daughter is now 31, I took them from a British women who had her own cake shop. So probably 24 or so years ago, and she was using her own form of sugar paste even then. It hadn't quite caught on, as buttercream & royal icing were still King. She was one of those decorators who was ahead of her time. I often wonder if she is even still alive. She was 60ish, like me, so she would be in her early 80's. I am ashamed to say, I can't even remember her name.
And ganache with sugarpaste/fondant over top sounds a little sickening sweet to me, but that is just me. And yuk, no you would never, never put ganache over fruitcake. Man, just talking about this makes me want a slice of my Mom's cake!!!
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