Every year, my Mum would do something special for those around us – school teachers, guide leaders, postman, etc – and one year she made individual Christmas cakes.

She bought Christmas cakes from the supermarket, those square fruit cakes, and cut them into quarters to make 4 cakes. She put each cake on a piece of strong cardboard covered in foil. We then iced them with Royal icing (the white icing on wedding cakes). On some of them we decorated the icing with icing tools to put patterns around the top.

She then got us to roll out the scraps of icing and cut out holly leaves with mini cutters. These we painted green with food colouring. We also made little balls to be holly berries and painted these red.

We decorated the tops of the cakes with the holly berries and leaves and Mum piped “Merry Christmas” on the top in white icing. We then painted the letters with gold.

To complete the gifts, we wrapped them in clear cellophane tied up with red and green curling ribbon.

They looked fantastic and were well received by everyone.