Sunday Sweets: Merry Treats!
December 25, 2011 It's Christmas!!
Yippee!
So what are you doing online?
No, no, I understand; I need little breaks from all that family time, too.
I mean...[eying family]...uh, I like to check Sunday Sweets with my family, too! Yeah. Ahem.
[pointing] Look, over there! Pretty!
I'm one of those people who goes a little nuts with my wrapping - you know, wrapping the box lids separately and getting all Martha Stewart on the sprigs and sparkly coordinated tags and whatnot - so this is right up my alley. Can you believe that bow? And the ornaments are edible, too!
This giant nutcracker looks like he should be the doorman at FAO Schwarz:
;)
By valscustomcakes under the instruction of Mike's Amazing Cakes.
I'd never guess there was soft squishy cake under there: he looks solid enough to crack walnuts!
Of all the tree cakes I've seen, I think this one is my favorite:
;)
It's so bright and cheery - like the Misfit Toys will come bouncing over any second now.
In fact...
;)
Yep, there they are!
More edible ornaments - this time with an edible box!
;)
Could this BE any more realistic? Seriously. At this point I think I'm going to start gnawing on random Christmas decorations around the house, just to be sure.
Now, BRING US A FIGGY PUDDING!
;)
By Gill Smith
Thank you.
(At least, I *think* that's a figgy pudding. To be honest, I've never seen an actual figgy pudding, and have long suspected it's some kind of holiday euphemism.)
When you see so many gravity-defying and technically advanced cakes, it's easy to take things for granted. For example, how do you think they got these edible reindeer to match the exact curve of the cake?
;)
Submitted by Janina M. and made by Sugar Sweet Cakes & Treats
I know that silicone molds were involved, but beyond that, I'm stumped. And very impressed.
Here's another brilliant technique:
;)
Submitted by Julie K. and made by i am baker
It's like pleated ribbons of icing! Gorgeous, and fondant-free to boot.
Ah, but this one gets even better: like a beautifully wrapped package, the best surprise is inside:
;)
Amazing.
Is that a blue figgy pudding I see?
;)
More importantly: LOOK AT THAT ADORABLE POLAR BEAR. [squee!]
Everyone has a favorite Christmas show, it seems. I love all the classics, of course, but the one I make sure to watch every year is the Jim Carrey version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I know, I know: you think less of me now. I'm sorry. But I love it.
Which brings me to...
;)
By Jacques Fine European Pastries
This was modeled after the original, too, so you purists can feel free to ooh and ahh. ;)
And finally:
;)
Merry Christmas and happy holidays, everyone!
Reader Comments (52)
How did they put the ornament in the cake?
Absolutely beautiful. Thank you for the Christmas presents.
And a Merry Christmas to you, too, Jen and John (thoJ)..... Cake Wrecks is a wonderful gift you two give all of your devoted followers every day! Thank you!
Jen, I got my autographed copies of "Cake Wrecks" & "Wreck the Halls" today for Christmas! Thank you for all your snark & Hysterical laughter! (And also thanks to my brother in law who went to the book siging in Orlando to get them for me) Yayyyyy! <Kermit flail>
(I can't see the first one.)
I WANTED to LOVE Jim Carrey/Ron Howard version. I really did.
That classic Grinch cake is simply freakin' awesome and the nutcracker makes me think of the Disney parade (glad to know someone other than my mother and I tear up when they go by).
Peace on Earth and goodwill to all living beings!
I don't know what Figgy Pudding is. However, my cousin lives in England and she posted a pic to FB yesterday that looks EXACTLY like that first "figgy pudding" cake. I mean, down to the red ribbon strip along the bottom and the berries/leaves on top. She said it was fruitcake. Merry Christmas! Or, barring that, Happy Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yule/Sunday!
I hope your Christmas is as beautiful as these cakes!
Its not only Christmas, it's my B-day! So thanks for making my day even better! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
± _ _ ±
( OO )
@
$$$
And a very Merry Christmas to Jen and John and the crew!
Merry Christmas to the web site most likely to make me spew coffee all over my monitor.
Merry Christmas Jen and John! Opening up your Sunday Sweets, was my first present to open this morning!
All the best (well worst... in cakes!) in 2012!
Diane Cooper
Trust me, you DON'T want to go around randomly eating ornaments! I tried it once, and ended up in the ER after biting into a glass bulb ornament. OK, so I was only 2 at the time, but it's still not a good idea!
Merry Christmas!
oh I love them all.
Merry Christmas Jen and John. Thanks for bringing me a present every day of the year! YOU ROCK!
Seeing my Reindeer Cake on Sunday Sweets Christmas morning is the best present ever!!! Thank you Jen and John. Merry Christmas! =)
Merry Christmas indeed!
Never thought I would see a cake iced in all red that I liked... but the reindeer cake is AMAZING!
Merry Christmas guys!!
The figgy pudding recipe I have is like a bread pudding made with a date-and-fig bread, but apparently a lot of British Christmas puddings have figs and other dried fruit in them. I always want to make one, but I invariably leave it until too late. The recipe I have begins "start on All Saint's Day..." i.e. November 1st!
For people wondering about the ornament inside the cake, here's the baker's tutorial for them: http://iambaker.net/christmas-tree-cake-tutorial
Check out her whole baking blog! It's full of wonderful tutorials for cakes and other awesome stuff. And it all looks so amazing and delicious!
Merry Christmas to you and yours! Beautiful treats today!!
Happy, Merry, Season's, Winter, Festive or whatever the wonderful day you celebrate! And don't forget to wish me Happy Birthday, everyone seems to forget in all the jolliness.
Love to all and to all a day of peace and goodwill.
I've made figgy pudding. It's a steamed cake. I have my great grandmother's pan (which is probably 100 years old), and you could get drunk on the fumes. You make the cake, and put it in a pan that has a lid that screws on. Then you put that down in boiling water. I stick it in a pasta pot and put aluminum foil on the bottom to keep the pudding pan from touching the bottom and burning. I made a chocolate raspberry pudding (which did have figs) and a gingerbread one (my favorite, albeit figless.) I won't say it's the prettiest thing you've ever seen, but I think it's tasty.
Some people pour cream over it, which is what accounts for the white icing. Mine is shaped like a cylinder, not a dome.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GIGGLEMASTER!!!! We share a day. Anyone ever give you one box and say, "Merry Birthday"? Me, too. Best wishes!! and a Happy, happy day.
RE: matching the reindeer to the curve of the cake:
I don't know how this cake artist did it but when I did a Wedgwood wedding cake years ago, I used silicone molds to do the white gumpaste figures for the sides. The secret was in the drying. I taped sheets of stiff, thin white plastic to the pans I was going to use to bake the tiers and dried the gumpaste pieces on the outsides of the pans. The icing of the tiers made up for the difference between the outsides of the pans and the resulting baked cakes. Voila -- instant matching curvatures.
I have loved you forever but love you even more now that I know you love the Jim Carrey version of 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. I adore that movie! Merry Christmas!
Jen, I just wanted to let you know I LOVE the Jim Carrey version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and prefer it to the original. I'm 29 years old and grew up with Dr. Seuss' stories, and appreciate them all, but the film from 2000 is one of my favorite Christmas movies ever, right behind "Home Alone" and "The Santa Clause". Merry Christmas, Jen and John, and thanks for all you do to entertain us with cakes, whether they're wrecks or sweets! (p.s. Growing up in Southern California, I'm a HUGE Disney geek, too!)
Ok so what is a Figgy pudding as in We wish you a merry Christmas and we all love Figgy Pudding.
It a old recipe of stuff like fruit and, I think meat.
The recipe has of cause has left the meat behind, in much the same way Mince pies has, and it is not fruit and treacle and Suet . Foritfied with brooze like Wiskey and Brandy and that, strangely like the cake, and made months early so you can add more brooze to it.
Why it got the white stuff is anyone guess as it never serve that way in real life, it might be fire might, but is usually drawn that way.
Anyway have a good Christmas
My fiance is English and the figgy pudding does look exactly like the real ones! They're more commonly called Christmas Pudding where he's located but don't don't about the rest of the country. I've got two in my pantry that I brought home with me from my visit a few weeks ago. They're a rich fruitcake type of steamed dessert that's full of alcohol and served with rum or brandy sauce. We haven't tried ours yet, but I can't wait! The rest of the cakes are gorgeous as well - Love the first one, simple but elegant! Merry Christmas to you and John. Thank you for the daily gift of laughter :)
Hi there - ok let me tell all you non-brits about figgy pudding - we just call it Christmas Pudding these days.
anyhoo, Its a very traditional sweet spiced suet and fruit steamed pudding with lots of alcohol in it. (usually sherry or port) it dates back to medieval times and I always make mine one year in advance for the best flavour!
traditionally it would contain a real sixpence for one lucky person to find, its supposed to bring prosperity and luck for the following year.
#7 Now those deer ain't ninjas!
#8a/b Amazing.
#9 No marshmallows or pipe cleaners in sight. Thank you for proving that blue frosting doesn't have to be wrecky.
Merry Christmas to Jen, John (thoJ), the rest of the CW team and all my fellow comment-taters / members of DOC, who it seems only get Sundays off the entire figgy year. And all lurkers as well (you know who you are, and so do we).
Craig
I made "figgy pudding" this year! So I can personally testify that it IS real, although no figs were involved, although beef suet definitely is. It's surprisingly good, too, :) Merry Christmas to all! (I kind of doubt there was beef suet in that cake... but you'd be very surprised at how good it can be...)
Best wishes for a very Merry Christmas, and thank you for your continuing gift of humor, seasoned on Sundays with a dash of awe and wonder....
Thank you! What a relief after all those horrible and creepy Christmas cakes!
We are watching the Jim Carrey version as I read this, so I'm not one to judge! I think my favorite Christmas movie is Elf ;)
An elementary tutorial on the ribbon cake is on http://www.diamondsfordessert.com/2011/11/happy-2nd-birthday.html
check out the chocolate Han Solos too.
Another amazing post! Love that polar bear. And the best part of y Christmas today was unwrapping your book! Merry Holidays to you!!
My sister got me an autographed copy of Wreck the Halls for Christmas! I squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!
The first tree looked very Dr.Suess-ish to me. Loved the Grinch one as well.
I think the reindeer one would make a beautiful Christmas wedding cake!
I LOVE Jim Carey's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! I watch it every year and my dad can quote the entire thing. But all of my friends Don't like that version. How can you not like it?! It doesn't make sense!!
What lovely Christmas presents you gave us!!
Hope your day was wonderful.
I want to know how they made the ornament inside that cake too...so cool. But I love all these :)
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweeeeeet!!! Love the old Grinch with Boris Karloff, but also the new Grinch with Jim Carrey (and Hopkins). No worries on me thinking less of you for such, oh wise punster.
I absolutely adore that you include fondant free cakes... real buttercream!!!! Those are ones I squee over.
Thank you for a Merry Christmas -- wouldn't have missed checking out the day's post! Merry Christmas to you and all, and to all a very happy NEW YEAR!!
My younger daughter is almost five and she lives and breathes the Grinch year-round. She had a fit when she saw that cake! This past February for her 4th birthday she desperately wanted a Grinch-themed party, complete with a Mt. Crumpit cake. I wasn't the prettiest thing ever but she loved it! We had to drag all the Christmas decorations back out of the garage just for her. We've watched the "real" version probably 200 times, and the cartoon version several dozen times. It's actually an excellent movie, I tried hard not to like it but having seen it so very many times now, the story line is really quite touching and there are so many funny little things hidden in the movie that you start catching on to. My little girl wears a Cindy Lou Who necklace and sleeps with 2 stuffed Grinches, a stuffed Max, a Cindy Lou doll, and her real dog, aptly named Max. She's also a huge CakeWrecks fan and was there for your very first Orlando book signing, although I doubt she remembers it :)
OOOOH now I'm craving figgy pudding....
My husband had a thought on the reindeer - mold them against the outside of the cakes pans (ie, in the silicone mold and then the flat side against the pan so they dry with a curve. I believe a previous poster mentioned this too :)
Beautiful! Lovely as always! Belated Merry Christmas and very Happy Holiday season!
I went to the comments solely to say how I would do the reindeer, but I see another Laura already beat me to it! I made a steampunk show cake for a school final, and I'd intended it to have doors on it (I ran out of time and didn't get to put them on), and that's how I molded them -- got the shape I wanted in gumpaste, then put in on an upturned pan matching the cake's circumference to dry,
Am I the only one who sees a massive head wound on the polar bear? Poor thing.
*I* wanna know how Santa is supposed to steer without running into trees if all his reindeer are looking back at him!
Wait...Is Santa DEAF, and steering/directing by sign language? That must be it! How neat! :) :)
Such glorious cakes and treats show up on Sunday sweets...just awesome! Thank you Jen and hubby! :)
Glad to see others have pointed this out but yes the 'figgy pudding' cakes are British Christmas Puddings - I live in London (from Florida represent!) and it's a common Christmas symbol, like Santa Clause or Reindeer that they put on cards etc. The exact shape of those cakes matches the cartoon symbol version of Christmas Pudding. And yes, they are super good!