Christmas cakes have been made in many different ways over the years. Some family’s have their own special traditions and ways of making their cakes. It’s a tradition that is kept up not only in our country but also in many other parts of the world too. For example in Japan, Christmas cake is a frosted sponge cake with strawberries, chocolates, or sometimes seasonal fruit and in the Philippines, Christmas cake is a yellow pound cake with nuts.
Our ubu Christmas Cake Competition got the people we serve very busy sourcing the finest ingredients, baking to perfection and decorating to impress and entertain.
Here are some of the photographs of cakes that were sent to us. We are sure they all tasted as good as they look.
This sparkling Christmas cake below is from a ubu support in Middlesbrough. It even lights up so that you can even enjoy eating it eat in the dark!
Brian and John from Manchester decorated two Christmas cakes, which they are taking to Christmas parties in Wigan and Manchester and are going to be used in “Guess the Weight” competitions.
Brain and John insisted on wearing Santa outfits whilst making their cakes to be sure that they were in the best season spirit while they worked!
The photographs below from Megan in Lincoln shows the amazing snowman Christmas cake she made and decorated which we think must have tasted delicious.
Mark from Spalding worked alongside his ubu enabling team to make a mouth-watering sponge Christmas cake. We thought the Post Box design was absolutely brilliant and very Christmassy.
Malcolm’s Christmas cake was to be a carrot and walnut cake. At least that was the plan…
Malcolm, who lives in Middlesbrough with greater independence and enabled by ubu was determined to enter the competition. Malcolm picked the type of cake he wanted to make. He weighed everything out and prepared the mixture ready to bake. Malcolm also wanted to make sure some shortbread was made to decorate the cake with as well.
Once the Carrot Cake was cooked and cooled Malcom cut the cake into a star shape but unfortunately it just wouldn’t hold its shape! Not to be put off by this minor inconvenience he had a brilliant idea. Malcolm, stacked up the pieces of cake so that they were the shape of, and looked like, a Christmas tree. “Let’s make a Christmas tree with decorations on it!” said Malcolm and added the decorated shapes and shortbread he had made earlier. The result, as you can see is a totally unique and scrumptious-looking Festive cake.
In Leeds, some of the people we serve and the ubu enabling team decided that they would make a Christmas cake together. It was agreed that two people, Rebecca and David, would take on vital roles in the preparation of the cake. Rebecca went into Leeds city centre and shopped for all the ingredients they would need to bake and decorate their cake. Rebecca said afterwards that she really enjoyed that part; thinking about what they needed, choosing the best of what she could find and dealing with doing the actual buying of goods.
When Rebecca returned from her mammoth shopping trip, she unpacked the ingredients and handed over to David to begin getting the cake ready to be decorated. David’s job was to roll out the icing. He seemed to really love doing this and with some encouragement and support made sure that there was just the right amount of icing ready to put over the cake and a bit extra for the decorations.
In Blackpool Lorna, Billy, Susie, and Sam worked creatively together to decorate their cake in a very colourful way. As you can see from their cake below it was covered in red, green and silver mini baubles and icing sugar with a cute snow bear and Santa decoration to finish it off.
Jessica, Sarah, and Tracey in Louth live together and are enabled to have more independence in everything they do. The ladies had a great time making these Christmas snow globe cakes. They used gelatine for the snow globes by painting it on to balloons and leaving it to set. What an inventive idea! Then they made special seasonal Christmas cupcakes. The next step was to make gingerbread men to put inside of the snow globe cakes! We think they look fantastic.
John from Scarborough, enabled to live with more independence by ubu, has been making this wonderful Christmas cake (below) over the last few weeks. John researched and found the perfect recipe, purchased the ingredients, made the mix and baked the cake. He decorated it beautifully and says "I'm so proud of what I've made, I'm going to share it with my neighbours and my family this Christmas."
It’s never easy picking a winner especially when all the entries have been so good and had such a lot work put in to them.
We thought that the cake pictures sent in by Barbara from Harrogate showed a truly worthy winner. Barbara says “I love to bake and I’m learning new skills every week which have been making me feel more confident and excited about having a go.” When Barbara heard about ubu’s Christmas competition categories she said “I knew right away that the Christmas Cake was the one for me to have a go at”. With some enabling support from ubu, Barbara designed the cake, made a list of all the ingredients she would need and went out to buy the ingredients.
Barbara was able to use the baking skills she has been developing recently and when the cake had cooled, she enjoyed decorating it in the beautiful and colourful way you can see in her photographs below. Barbara says “I hope you like my Christmas Train cake as I had so much fun making it. I’d like to wish you all a very happy Christmas!”
