How to Make a Christmas Drip Cake

First, make the meringues. Heat the oven to 100C fan. You will need 1 egg white for green, 1 egg white for red and 1 to be left white. Weigh each egg white and double it to work out how much caster sugar you will need – if your egg white weighs 35g then you will need 70g of caster sugar.

Put the egg white in a clean metal or glass bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until voluminous and cloud like.

Top Tip! The bowl must be scrupulously clean as any fat in the bowl will prevent the egg whites from gaining volume – you can rub the inside of the bowl with a cut lemon to remove all traces of fat.

Keep the whisk going and add in the sugar a spoon at a time and keep whisking until the meringue is thick and glossy and stands up in stiff peaks.

Top Tip! Rub a little of the meringue between your thumb and forefinger – if it feels grainy then the sugar has not fully dissolved so keep whisking until it is smooth.

Leave one batch white then repeat the process and add green food colour towards the end of whisking. Finally repeat the process and add red food colour.

Fit the 3 Wilton Colour Swirl coupler pieces into a piping bag each and use the guide notches on each piece to fit them together. Add the plain metal tip and screw on the purple ring.

Take a tall glass and stand the piping bags up inside it. Fill each bag with one of the 3 colours of meringue. Gather up the bags in your hand, give them all a twist together and squeeze until all the colours come through the metal nozzle.

Line a baking tray with baking parchment and pipe out the meringues. Do some small 'kisses' and some taller, larger swirls.

Put the meringues in the oven and immediately turn the oven down to 80c. Leave them to dry out in the oven for 2 – 3 hours.

Top Tip! The meringues are ready when they come off the baking parchment easily and the base is dry to the touch. Turn the oven off and leave the meringues in the oven with the door shut until cold. You can store the meringues in an airtight container until ready to use.

Use snowflake cutters to cut out white modelling paste snowflakes and leave these to dry out overnight before using to decorate the cake.

Take your sandwich cake and use a small palette knife to cover it all over the sides and top with a layer of buttercream. Put the cake on a turntable and hold a plastic scraper in one hand at a right angle to the side of the cake and use the other hand to rotate the cake to scrape off most of the buttercream. Keep going until there is only a very thin layer of buttercream left on the cake and the cake shows through in places. Put the cake in the fridge to chill for 1 hour.

Before adding the Candy Melts drips to your cake, gather together all your sprinkles, snowflakes and meringues.

Top Tip! You will need to work quickly to decorate your cake before the Candy Melts set!

Melt 100g of red Candy Melts and stir in a little vegetable oil (1-3 tbls) until well incorporated and the Candy Melts run off the spoon with the consistency of double cream. Use a teaspoon to dribble the Candy Melts around the top edge of the chilled cake.

When you have drips all around the sides of the cake, fill in the top of the cake with the rest of the melted Candy Melts. Decorate your cake as desired before the Candy Melts set.

Top Tip! Place your largest decorations first, in this case the swirled meringues, and build up the other decorations around them.