Layered Snowmen Desserts

Of course, you probably know me very well for invading Vocal with my film studies stuff and articles entitled ‘a filmmaker’s guide’. I have often explained that I love to bake as well. Since I was young, I have loved the idea, the creativity and the relaxation of baking different things. I love to make macarons, layer cakes and gingerbread in particular and the activity of it really gets me away from my laptop (where I’m sure you know that I spend most of my life). So, I hope you enjoy me talking about what I bake and why I bake it complete with pictures (if not very good) of me actually baking, my baked goods in the process of being created and when they’re finished. I’m really happy to share this with you. And if you like, you can show me your baking (yes, I spend a lot of time writing, but I also spend a lot of time reading other people’s articles!), I would love to see it. Since I was in school, I was always interested in creating things, whether that be pieces of writing, welding things to make small statues or baking foods and making sweets (candy, if you’re American). I hope you enjoy looking at some of the stuff that has honestly kept me sane, because I seem to be going slightly mad.

Layered Snowmen Desserts

Chocolate, Ginger and Vanilla are some great flavours to prepare for the Christmas Season and instead of just baking cakes and cookies, you can also try out a dessert that can sit at your plate and look so pretty that you don't really want to eat it and spoil the design. My designing really, though, is not all that great. But I have tried to make what is a cute snowmen that looks like it was made by playing children by layering up some great flavours.

This recipe will make 4-6 depending on the size of your domes.

Chocolate and Marzipan Dome Filling

1. The first thing you want to do is get your marzipan and chocolate ready:
2. Take 4-6 blocks of chocolate and wrap them each in a thin layer of marzipan.
3. Cover the marzipan in honey and roll around in desiccated coconut
4. Set these to one side to dry

Now, you can move on to making the cake recipe for the dome...

Cake Domes for the Base of the Snowmen

1. Preheat the oven to 200C
2. Oil 4-6 medium domes of a baking tray (I used silicone)
3. Cream together 115g Chilled Butter with 115g Caster Sugar, 1tbsp vinegar and 1/2 tbsp baking powder
4. Mix in 1 tbsp of ginger and 1 tbsp of vanilla bean paste
5. Add in 115g of self-raising flour and whisk quickly
6. Separate the mixture between the 4-6 oiled domes and put in the oven for 20 minutes.
7. Allow to cool for 15 minutes

The mixture should puff up and then collapse again, allowing you to make a neat and hollow dome without having to do any cutting after they've cooled.

Whilst they're cooking, roll out a sheet of white fondant icing. Make sure it's not thin enough to be seen through, but also not thick enough so that your dessert tastes too sickly sweet.

Assembling the Snowmen

1. After the bases have cooled, tip them out and put the marzipan and chocolate beneath with one per dome.
2. Cover each of the domes then in white fondant icing and smooth out.
3. Grab some dark chocolate, some biscuit or anything you wish to put inside the body (I used dark chocolate) and wrap it in some white fondant icing as well.
4. Drive a cocktail stick through the fondant wrap you've just made and place it on top of the dome so that the body doesn't topple off.
5. Roll up a piece of white fondant icing into a ball and put another cocktail stick through it. Place a triangular piece of chocolate or make a hat from fondant and attach it to one side of the cocktail stick with the ball shape as the head.
6. Put this cocktail stick on top of the body to create the snowman
7. To make the scarf, make sausages out of three different colours of fondant icing, as you can see, I used yellow pink and green.
8. Lay the sausages next to each other so that they look like ribbon candy.
9. Roll out the three sausages together, making sure that they stay together to form a long piece. Chop this piece into 4-6 depending on the domes you have and wrap around the necks of the snowmen, stretching a tiny bit if you need to.
10. Add white fondant arms by making more, but thicker sausages. Make sure you press down the ends where the arm attaches to the body because this means the arm won't fall off.
11. Once your assembly is complete then place in the fridge so everything can dry.