» Melting Snowmen

Melting Snowmen

Recipe - 19 December 2019

Introduction

Not everyone wants to eat fruit cake at Christmas: these colourful snowmen are simple enough for children to decorate too.

20 minutes + a few hours to dry

Easy

110g unsalted butter, cubed, plus more for the tin
150g plain biscuits
90g golden caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp cocoa
50g 50% cocoa solids chocolate, broken into pieces
150g chocolates and sweets (mini marshmallow, crushed honeycomb chocolate bars, malted chocolate balls and caramel chocolate work well)
20 foil fairy cake cases
600g white sugar paste
icing sugar to dust
6cm round cutter
60g bad of white royal icing
60g bag of black royal icing
30g bag of red royal icing
40 mini chocolate beans
assorted strands, laces and long striped sweets

Place the cases into 2 fairy cake trays. Pack the cake mixture into the cases so that each is slightly domed and place in the refrigerator to set.
To make the snowmen’s heads, roll 20 balls of white sugar paste (each about the size of a cherry). Dust a work top and rolling pin with icing sugar and roll out the remaining sugar paste to 5mm thick. Using the cutter, cut out 20 circles. place 1 on to each cake and smooth into place. Using the white royal icing, stick a snowman’s head on to each cake. Allow to dry for a few hours.
Pipe 2 black eyes and a red nose on to each snowman, then stick on 2 mini bean buttons. Finish by twisting a length of sweet around the neck of each snowman, holding in place with a little more royal icing.

Recipe taken from Bake & Decorate, published by Quadrille, photography by Laura Hynd