Christmas Cake Decorations
Two kinds of reader arrive here, and the page answers both. If you are ordering a decorated Christmas cake, this is what goes on one and what each thing costs — themed cakes from £120, with orders closing 5 December.
If you have your own cake on the worktop and a bag of decorations, skip to the second half: which of them hold for a week, which slide off, and why the holly should not be real.
What does each decoration cost?
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
Themed Christmas cake From — decorated to a Christmas theme rather than a traditional fruit cake. Orders close 5 December any size | £120 |
Edible sparkles Gold or silver — the cheapest thing that reads as Christmas per cake | £7–£15 |
Chocolate Figurine Elegant moulded chocolate figurine each | £15 |
Edible Image Sugar Sheet Per per one sheet a4 size — a photograph or artwork on the cake one image | £20 |
Writing is included on every cake, and so are sprinkles. The toppers page has the full list of what goes on top and whether each is edible, and Christmas cakes covers the ordering and the cut-off.
Tell us about the cake
We reply within 24 hours with a price. No deposit is taken until you are happy with the quote.
Not ready to send it? What follows answers most of what people ask first.
How long it takes
7–10 days for a simple design, at least 14 for two tiers.
Sooner is sometimes possible: a rush adds 50% when the notice is under 7 days, if the diary is clear.
In a hurry? Bento cakes take 3–5 days.
Delivery
From £30, quoted by distance from RG12 0UY.
Collection from Bracknell is free — see the areas we cover.
Paying
50% deposit to hold your date; orders under £50 are paid in full.
Balance 3 hours before collection, or cash on the day.
The deposit is non-refundable but transferable with 4 days' notice — full terms.
Which decorations hold, and which do not?
It depends almost entirely on what is underneath them. A royal-iced fruit cake is a hard, dry surface that will carry an ornament for a month; buttercream is soft and will not hold anything heavy upright; fondant is firm but marks if the cake has been refrigerated. The table below is what actually happens, and it applies to your own cake as much as to ours.
| Decoration | On royal icing | On buttercream |
|---|---|---|
| Sprinkles and sparkle | Weeks | Fine, but sparkle dulls as the surface softens |
| Piped holly and berries | Weeks | Days, and softer-edged |
| A heavy ornament or figure | Holds upright | Sinks — needs a board under it |
| Printed sugar sheet | Needs a flat dry surface | Wrinkles and the ink bleeds |
| Ribbon round the board | Indefinitely | Indefinitely |
| Fresh holly or ivy | Toxic — do not | Toxic — do not |
The last row is the only one that matters for safety rather than appearance. Holly berries are poisonous and the leaves are not food; the same goes for ivy, mistletoe and poinsettia, all of which turn up on cakes every December.
What does a decorated Christmas cake from here look like?
A themed cake rather than a traditional one. The cakes here are sponges and layered cream cakes, so a Christmas cake is one of those decorated to a design — a winter scene, a tree, a snowy finish, a printed photograph of the family — from £120. A 6-inch feeds 8–12, which is a family Christmas Day rather than a party.
What it will not be is the dark fruit cake under marzipan and royal icing that the phrase “Christmas cake” means to a lot of British households. That is a preserve matured over weeks and it is a different trade; we say so rather than let somebody open the box on Christmas Eve and find a sponge. The Easter page gives the same honest answer about simnel cake.
When does the cake need to be ordered?
By 5 December for Christmas itself, which is the hard date — the week before Christmas is full and a cake made in it would be rushed. The ordinary notice is 7–10 days, so asking in the last week of November is comfortable rather than early.
New Year is a separate deadline nearly four weeks later — the New Year page has it, and it is the one people miss because they assume the Christmas cut-off ended the season. For a cake inside the rush window, see last-minute cakes.
What else do people ask?
Allergies? Our kitchen handles all 14 of the allergens UK law requires us to declare, so nothing we bake is free from any of them. What is in each cake, and our hygiene rating.