Christmas Cake Wraps: An Edible Band for Your Christmas Cake

Choose a ribbon band or a full wrap

A traditional British Christmas cake has a ribbon round the side. A printed edible band does the same job: a strip of icing sheet (frosting sheet) with a pattern or photos, sitting on the side of the iced cake. It can run the full height of the cake, or sit lower like a ribbon with plain icing showing above it.

A shorter band is also cheaper to make. A 2 inch strip packs more pieces onto each sheet, so most cakes need one A4 sheet instead of two:

Fruit cakes are often shallower than sponges, so measure yours rather than assuming a height. Set the band a few millimetres short of the top edge if you plan to pipe a border there.

Measure over the marzipan and icing, not the tin

The wrap goes round the outside of the finished cake. Marzipan and icing make the cake wider than its tin, and every extra millimetre on each side adds about 6 mm to the distance round it. With about 1 cm of marzipan and icing, an 8 inch cake is 701 mm round, and a strip cut for the bare tin comes up about 63 mm short at the back.

1. Best: cover the cake first, then run a soft tape measure round the middle of the side. Use that measurement plus a 10 mm overlap.
2. Planning ahead: if the cake is not covered yet, use the tin size and your expected thickness of marzipan and icing. Re-measure before you print.
3. Square cakes: run the tape round the finished cake so the rounded corners are included. The cake wrap calculator accounts for corners either way.

Christmas designs that work round a cake

A wrap is seen from every side, and its two ends meet at the back. Designs that repeat, or that have a quiet area where the ends meet, hide that join best.

Print it at actual size

For the 8 inch example, a 3 inch full wrap prints as 3 strips on 2 A4 sheets, and a 2 inch ribbon band as 3 strips on 1 A4 sheet. The strips overlap slightly where they join, so the pattern carries on across the seam.

1. Test on plain paper first. Print the strips and tape them together, then hold them round the covered cake to check the length and colours before you use an icing sheet.
2. Print at 100% or “Actual size”, never “Fit to page”. A printer that shrinks the page shortens every strip.
3. Check the scale line. A 50 mm line printed beside the strips should measure 50 mm. If it doesn’t, the printer scaled the page.
4. Keep ink off the peel tab. Many icing sheets have a strip of bare plastic backing at one end. Ink there smears. The cake wrap maker can plan the strips to leave it clear.
5. Use the edible-ink printer and the paper setting your sheet supplier recommends, one sheet at a time.

Put the wrap on the cake

Marzipan needs time to dry before it is iced. UK guides suggest between one and three days, depending on the marzipan and whether you use sugarpaste or royal icing. Put the wrap on once the icing has set, so it sits on a firm, even surface.

1. Peel the strips. If a strip won’t come off its backing, one supplier suggests 10 to 15 seconds in a dry freezer so the icing pops off. Do this with the sheet, not the cake.
2. Prepare the side. On sugarpaste, brush or spray a little water only where the strip will go: enough for it to stick, but no puddles, which spoil the colours and mark the icing. On royal icing that has dried hard, a fine mist of water works the same way. Have the cake at room temperature, not straight from the fridge or freezer.
3. Start at the back. Press the first strip on at the back, then work round, smoothing from the middle of each strip outwards with dry hands.
4. Line up the joins. Lay each strip over the end of the last so the pattern matches. The last strip overlaps the first by 10 mm.
5. Hide the joins. Pipe a line of royal icing over each join, or finish with a real ribbon or piped border at the base.

A fruit cake keeps for a long time, but the printed sheet is best kept dry: store the finished cake in a box away from damp, rather than in an airtight tin where condensation can form. Follow your icing sheet supplier’s storage advice.