Christmas cake

Christmas cake- with compulsary snowmen.
The snowmen were originally from a snowstorm, which got broken, and have been with us ever since, and have to go on the Christmas cake every year. The cake was supplied by my friend, Jill, in the form of an early present; well she makes much beter Christmas cake than me. I started to ice the cake this morning as I was anticipating having to wait for icing to set and then apply more icing; I hadn't really thought it through. However, I managed to decorate it in a oner, by cutting out shapes of white marzipan and sticking them onto the wet icing, and adding silver balls. It is better to add the silver balls to the marzipan shapes before putting them on the cake, otherwise you have to wait till the icing is hard. I added some more after this photo was taken. I find children just want to do it all at once and don't like waiting for things the set before finishing it off. For the icing I used the egg white left over from the yolk in yesterday's mince pie pastry. Underneath is the traditional apricot jam and marzipan, rolled out in one large piece and folded over the whole top and sides. Of course, the cake was upside-down, for a flatter finish. When asked, I couldn't answer why do you put icing on a cake? apart from: to make it nicer/ to look like snow?