Christmas Snowflake Cake 

Inspired by Fair Isle-style patterns and pretty snowflakes, our wintry bake looks like it took hours to decorate, but we’ll let you in on a secret… we did it the easy way, with help from our Snowflake Cake Stencil.

If you want to impress with your cake decorating skills – without needing loads of kit or experience – our reusable plastic stencil’s got you covered. To recreate our stencil cake, just wrap it around your iced cake and spread a layer of royal icing or buttercream over it with a decorating knife. Then scrape off the excess before lifting the stencil away to reveal an intricate embossed effect. Some might say it’s cheating, but we say it’s time-saving, and the results speak for themselves.                                                                                                            

Need a little more inspiration? Follow our steps below for stencilling success.

Instructions

Step 1 – gather your kit

Cake of your choice

Buttercream to sandwich your cakes together

Fondant icing, to cover your cake

Royal icing or buttercream, to decorate (this will save some time)

Sugarpaste icing, for the snowflakes on top (ready-made icing speeds things up)

Snowflake Cake Stencil

Cake Decorating Knives

Very small food-safe paintbrush

3 Snowflake Icing Cutters

Icing bag and nozzles

Cake Scraper

Blue food colouring – we used one from this set

Step 2 – bake and ice your cakes

Choose whatever cake you fancy – we baked three 9” Victoria sponges and sandwiched them together with buttercream – but the stencil will work on any cake up to 21cm high.

Cover your cakes with fondant icing (we coloured ours with light blue food colouring) and leave to harden for around 24 hours.

Step 3 – attach the stencil

Use pins to attach the stencil to the cake and keep it taught, ensuring the bottom of the stencil is flush with the bottom of the cake.

Step 4 – prepare some icing, or use ready-made to keep things speedy

We used royal icing to add the detail onto our cake, but buttercream works a treat too.

If you’d like to colour some of your buttercream, divide it into small bowls and mix in a drop or two of food colouring to achieve your desired shade.

Step 5 – apply the icing

Evenly cover the stencil with your chosen icing, applying it at the bottom and working it upwards with a cake decorating knife. Next, use an icing scraper to remove any excess icing, leaving a layer through the stencil.

Step 6 – remove the stencil

Remove the pins then carefully remove the stencil. We used a small food-safe paint brush to tidy up any icing imperfections. Let the icing on the cake set completely. Wash and thoroughly dry the stencil. If you’re using royal icing, keep it covered to avoid it going hard.

Step 7 – make your decorations

While you’re waiting for your icing to set, make a start on your decorations. Use a cutter from our 3 Snowflake Icing Cutter Set to cut eight delicate snowflakes out of white fondant sugarpaste and leave to dry. Don’t have time to make your own? Try these instead.

Step 8 – stencil on the next section

Once your first section of stencilled icing is completely set, carefully position the stencil onto the next un-iced section and repeat the process of applying the icing, scraping the excess, gently removing the stencil and tidying up with your paint brush. Allow to fully set.

Step 9 – add the finishing touches

Mix up some more buttercream (we used a ratio of 50g unsalted butter to 100g icing sugar, flavoured with 1/4 tsp vanilla extract); divide into two bowls and add blue food colouring (a few drops of this one works well) to one bowl, a few drops at a time, mixing between additions until your desired shade is achieved.

Using a piping bag fitted with a small star nozzle, pipe 8 swirls of white buttercream around the top of the cake, then use a piping bag fitted with a wider star nozzle to pipe a blue swirl on top of each. For the final finishing touch, top each icing swirl with a fondant snowflake.