Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I am thinking about making some christmas fruit cakes in advance to save a mad rush. Ho long does it keep? Can i cover and decor it now or store the fruit cake and cover & decor later??? will be using marzipan and fondant for the covering and decor

Hi Jean28

Fruit cakes should be baked at least three months in advance to allow time for maturing. Some people bake on Boxing day for the following year. I baked mine in August and have been feeding them brandy every two weeks.
They will be fed now right up a fortnight before I decorate. The longer fruit cake is allowed to mature, the deeper the flavour and moistness develops. There is a lot of information on the site about when and how to store fruit cake. Paul also has a section dealing with FC in the free/beginners tutorial library. If you bake your cakes now they will be fine and it does save a lot of time later.

I’ll be making 3 Christmas cakes within the next week or two, I just haven’t had time up to this.

When each one is cool I’ll be double wrapping them seperately in grease-proof paper and storing them in airtight cake boxes.

I’ll feed them with whiskey every week or two until I am ready to marzipan them, I’ll probably do that in early December and give them a week or so to dry out a little (still double wrapped in fresh grease-proof paper and in the same boxes (but I won’t close the lids tight for this stage).

I’ll fondant ice about a week or so before Christmas, you might want to allow more drying time if you are royal-icing your cake.

Any fondant decorations you want to make can be made at any time and stored in a dark dust free environment until you are ready to use them.

This is my plan so far 🙂

I made mine a couple of weeks ago, and they will be fed weekly.