Can I Cover The Traditional Christmas Cake With Chocolate Instead Of Fondant Icing?

Our answer

Nigella's Traditional Christmas Cake (from NIGELLA CHRISTMAS) is a traditional rich fruit cake. Nigella suggests various decorartions including the Smooth Hatbox Icing, which is a coating of marzipan followed by a coating of fondant icing (ready rolled fondant).

We are not sure if the chocolate coating is supposed to be chocolate-flavoured fondant icing, but if it is then you could use this in the same way as white fondant icing. However, if it is supposed to be a coating of melted chocolate then this is not something we would advise. When chocolate is melted and cooled, it goes out of "temper". That is, it will look matte once it is cold and solid and will no longer be glossy. You could retemper the chocolate, which means it will still be shiny when set, but the chocolate will be difficult to cut neatly once set and will tend to crack and fall off the cake when you cut it. It may be possible to use chocolate ganache, but in our opinion it is not easy to store for any length of time as the cake should be refrigerated once it is coated in ganache and the ganache will only last 3-5 days. We also feel that ganache is too rich to go with the fruit cake and marzipan.