Katie’s Cakes Vol 4: Chocolate Yule Logging

I couldn’t wait for Christmas to roll round so that I could continue my adventures in cake decorating with a pair of chocolate yule logs – one of them inspired by a certain Christmas TV advert.

Admittedly, I didn’t bake these myself, they were bought from Sainsbury’s to act as blank (or should that be chocolate?) canvases for my fondant decoration fancies. For the first one, I sought inspiration from my employer’s Christmas advertising campaign. If you haven’t already witnessed the adorable tale of Mr and Mrs Snowman then hit play on the video below quicksmart. Be warned: it has a tendency to make people cry.

To recreat the final scene of the ad upon my log, I coloured six balls of ready-made fondant icing with Sugar Flair colouring. The snowpeople and their clothes were fairly easy to fashion, but the snowgirl’s arms were a bit tricky. I pushed a short length of toothpick through some brown fondant then carefully put the little red gloves on once the stick was pressed into the snowgirl. For the little fir trees, I followed the instructions on this video. I’m pretty pleased with the results, although smaller scissors would have made for neater trees.

For the second yule log, I went with just one snowman, but added some little presents by the tree using the leftover coloured fondant. Again, the trees and snowman were held in place with toothpicks pushed halfway into the log. I’ve now packed up my cake decorating bits to take home and unleash upon my Catholic mother’s Christmas cake. I wonder if she’ll be into my idea of a Panda Claus holding a little panda baby Jesus surrounded by reindeer and cherubs?