Christmas Present Cakes – A review of Mich Turner’s decorating range for Silver Spoon

Marzipan, icing & lustres by Mich Turner for Silver Spoon

I’ve had a flurry of things to test lately. It’s all very exciting.

BakingMad (aka Allinson / Silver Spoon’s baking community site) offered to send me some of the new Mich Turner cake decorating range to test. Having seen her brilliant demo at the Ideal Home show I was easily lured by the sound of Madagascan Vanilla Icing, Finest Marzipan and Gold, Bronze and Pearl Lustres. Also, if I’m honest – knowing how much icing costs I thought this was a great chance to get some practise in without having to spend a fortune.

So, let’s get the important review done first and then you can see how I got on.

I know this is my first review of proper cake making ingredients / decorating goods, but I was impressed.
The Madagascan vanilla ready to roll white icing is streets ahead of any I have used before tastewise. It is creamy and definitely tastes of vanilla rather than just sugar.
The Marzipan was much more gentle in flavour than bog standard types, a lot less lurid in colour and really looked like it had ground almonds in it rather than being just a yellowish dough. It was easy to work with and I plan to try it inside a croissant and toasted rather than hiding it under icing. Yum.
The Gold, Bronze and Pearl Lustres were the only part I struggled with and that’s probably because I got over excited and decided to paint the whole cake in it, rather than using it for highlighting details which I think this is probably their intended use. Is that right? Has anyone else tried similar products? The bronze one in particular seemed to take a long time to dry so I ended up with finger prints in it from moving it into the cake box. Sadly, you can’t really see the pearl in my photos, but I think it was my favourite as it was subtle but pretty.

So, what did I make? Well, when presented with Pearl, Bronze and Gold, it had to be Christmas parcels…

Make one little cake each of vanilla, chocolate, ginger (covered in marzipan here) and choc/vanilla

…once covered in marzipan, cover in icing…

...paint them in Mich Turner

...or colour the icing and add some stars...

...et voila! Little Christmas Parcels for Mr B

The recipes I used were:

Delia’s All in One Sponge

I split this in half and added vanilla to one half and 1tbsp of cocoa to the other half

110g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder
110g marg / butter
110g caster sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
2 large eggs
2-3 drops vanilla essence (I used 1/2 vanilla pod for the vanilla sponge)

Preheat oven to gas mark 3, 325f or 170c
Sift flour and baking powder into a large bowl
Add all the other ingredients and whisk until thoroughly combined
Spread into a large square/rectangular tin (or if you are making a round cake then two 7 inch tins)
Bake for around 30 mins

and for the ginger cake… The Pink Whisk’s Best Ever Ginger Cake (eggless) which I filled with a zesty lemon buttercream.