Who’s Sant Jordi? He’s Saint George and the patron saint of Catalonia following a visit where he slayed the dragon and rescued a damsel in distress. He was a busy knight, completing the same heroic deed in Britain and various other countries. But did you know here in Catalonia the April 23rd Diada de Sant Jordi celebrations also involve books and roses? All will be explained later with photos of the festival in Barcelona! But this is THE big romantic day of the year and I wanted to invent a cake for the occasion that could also double as sustenance for this weekend’s climbing in the pre-pyrenees. So to kill two birds with one stone (sorry birds, it’s just a figure of speech) I made a heart-shaped fruitcake, covered it in a layer of marzipan and added marzipan roses, a dragon and a book! Not just a fancy cake, but also tasty and fairly nutritious made with spelt flour, honey and brown muscovado sugar, replete with dried fruit and nuts. The marzipan is yummy and though decorating cakes really isn’t my forte it turned out almost presentable! You should give it a go, with or without the dragon! 🙂
I had to steel myself for the ordeal of cake decoration and eat loads of healthy chocolates first to help me prepare. But it wasn’t so bad! Marzipan is less sweet than fondant icing and yummy! You can have a great plasticine-like playtime session! Hmmm, my dragon does look like a kid made it. Must practise my dragons…
Rosy thoughts
Do you need patience and practice for the roses? Yup, a little! The techniques I used are based on Christophe Felder’s explanations in his Patisserie book combined with those taught on our basic Cordon Bleu patisserie course in Paris. To be honest our first roses were not particularly attractive. It was hot and mine were drooping and ugly, then I mistakenly put them in the fridge and they started sweating. Nightmare. Not to mention the shouting chefs à la Mr Ramsey (I did not mention that).
So I was most relieved when these roses turned out better. My main tip is: don’t flatten them out too thinly thinking you’re imitating nature. Forget nature, they need to be a little thicker than paper thin (within reason) or they droop and look sad. And don’t have too many petals.
The recipe
The fruitcake
Soak the dried fruit a day or more before making the orange and rum cake anglais-fruitcake (the recipe’s on my guest post at my friend’s Hogrider Dookes’ blog). Use a heart-shaped tin or any other shape (around 20cm diametre).
The marzipan layer
You’ll need around 350 to 400g of marzipan. With Christmas fruitcakes you wait at least a month till they mature before covering with marzipan, but this is a cake-anglais hybrid so we’re doing it now. Woohoo!
First turn your cake upside down so you get a flat surface to cover.
1. Gently warm a few tablespoons of apricot jam and brush a thin layer over the top and sides.
2. Knead the marzipan till it’s smooth and pliable, with very little green powder colouring or gel.
3. Lightly dust the worktop with icing sugar and roll out a layer of marzipan large enough to cover your cake’s top and sides. Use a measuring tape for greater precision.
4. Loosely roll the marzipan over your rolling pin.
5. Then unroll carefully over your cake.
6. Smooth the surface of the marzipan down with the palm of your hands so there are no pockets of air
7. Trim the excess marzipan with a sharp knife. If there are any gaps or holes you can fill with little pieces of marzipan.
The rope (twisted braid) border
Knead the leftover marzipan.
1. Roll two lengths of thin rope (enough to go around your cake).
2. Braid the two ropes together.
3. Carefully position the braided rope around the base of the cake.
The marzipan roses and leaves
White roses
1. Make a roll of marzipan.
2. Cut a plastic piping bag at the seam or an A4 plastic envelope (to get two sheets of plastic, one under and one on top).
3. Cut similarly sized pieces in your roll. Some can be smaller for the earlier petals. Also shape one little cone.
4. Place the pieces, well spaced out, between the two sheets of plastic.
5. Flatten with the back of a metal spoon.
6. Then flatten the outer edges of your petal a little more, leaving a slightly thicker middle base (of about 1cm height and width).
7. Carefully wrap the first smallest petal around your cone.
8. Add a second bigger petal, fixing at the base. Try to make the petals a little higher than the cone.
9. Pinch the petals between finger and thumb to give a ‘rose petal effect’.
10. Work your way around adding petals but not too many. Five or six petals seems to work – as you prefer.
Slice a bit off the base.
Red roses
Repeat the same process but adding the colouring powder or gel with care or you’ll get dark red roses like I did! Which strangely enough looked nice but I’m not eating them!
Leaves
The leaves are self-explanatory and fairly easy. Please follow the photos and don’t make them toooo thin or thick.
Put it all together and tada!
The dragon and book
Shape a dragon and book. For the book I used a toothpick to make horizontal markings. If you don’t like doing this kind of thing find someone helpful who likes modelling plasticine. Or have only roses.
Finishing the cake
Arrange your marzipan decorations on top and take photos from different angles… 
Oh, and eat it! It’s better after a few days and will keep at least a week or so wrapped in baking parchment then covered in foil. It could be stored without the decorations.
Sant Jordi’s Day
Want to see the Catalan legend of Saint George, the dragon, the maiden and the rose? Schoolchildren depict or act this story every year and make roses or dragons, and you can watch this charming tale on a youtube video narrated by a young person.
The dragon sowing terror and chaos in a delicatessen or looking shocked at the prices?
And the poetic part of the legend is when a drop of the dragon’s blood transforms into a rose.
A day out
Catalans all look forward to this lovely day, gathering in droves around the centre of Barcelona.
People browse at the stalls, buying books or roses. 
Women and children walk around happily holding their roses. These are not only presented to sweethearts but also to friends, mothers, daughters and classmates. 
Traditionally women receive roses and men receive books. But nowadays many women like to get books too. My friend bought a couple for herself and her mother.
Caught up in book-buying fever I picked one up too, about food of course. It’s written by a group of friends who were on a cooking course together.
And four of them kindly signed it for me!
There were famous authors signing books at various stalls drawing big crowds, so we walked a little further off in search of typical Sant Jordi breads and cakes. 
My friend did tell this man his bread is not really ‘traditional’. Neither are book-shaped cakes as both were reportedly invented in the 1980s. Luckily he was a cheerful man and not at all worried about such considerations. The bread’s striped to ressemble the Catalan flag, with layers of cheese and sobrasada (a raw cured sausage) and walnuts round the outside. Very tasty!
If you want to know more…
… you can soak in the atmosphere on the streets by watching two youtube videos: here and here. There’s also a great article here.
Back to my Sant Jordi cake!
You might not celebrate Sant Jordi or even Saint Georges, but I’ll wish you happy Diada de Sant Jordi anyway! And even if you don’t fancy the dragon and book perhaps one day you’d like to cover a cake with marzipan and roses. Oh, and make a lovely fruitcake too of course! No need to wait for Christmas! 🙂
I’ll take some to the Fiesta Friday party (woohoo!) with thanks to the lovely Angie@thenovice gardener for hosting and to her co-hosts Effie @Food Daydreaming and Jhuls @The Not So Creative Cook.too. Some cake will also go with me on this weekend’s climbing trip. My friends always appreciate a nice moist piece of fruitcake for a bit of energy between climbs! I hope they don’t mind the marzipan being green this time! 🙂
So I’ll say farewell to you and hope you enjoyed ‘virtually’ sharing in the festivities! May you ‘slay’ all your dragons and have a lovely rosy weekend ahead!!! Next time we’ll be eating something completely different – and less colourful! 🙂
lili's cakes 
I think your roses and other decorations are lovely. You certainly captured the idea of the festival in this cake! Also, love your pictures of Las Ramblas etc.
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Thank you Hilda for your lovely comments! I might be more motivated to continue into the world of cake decorations! 🙂 And I’m very happy you liked everything and the photos of Barcelona! 🙂
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The cake is amazing Lili and you did an awesome job (a lot patience). Thanks for sharing the step by step procedure. Beautiful Catalan traditions!
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Thank you so much Linda! You’re welcome and the decorations were more fun than I expected – you might enjoy such activities too! 🙂 And yes, despite the crowds it was lovely being out on such a special day here and seeing it all! Have a lovely weekend! 🙂
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This is my first time to hear about this ‘holiday’ Lili. I love dragons, books and roses. I love the introduction you gave. The cake is very beautiful and you are so very creative (as always). Thank you for sharing this at FF. Enjoy and have a lovely weekend. xx
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Thank you Jhuls and you’re welcome! 🙂 It’s only when I came to live here that I found out about this festival and I also love all the fantasy and book stuff. So glad you enjoyed it all and have a great weekend too! 🙂 x
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Ah!! Looking so beautiful and tasty too… 🙂
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Thank you Nimmi! 🙂
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Absolutely exquisite! You are truly an artist! 🙂
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Wow! Thank you so much chef julianna!! Might even decide to decorate a cake again one day! 🙂
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Wow, you’ve really dressed up this fruitcake. Gorgeous!
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Thank you so much Sarah! I like how you’ve said it’s ‘dressed up’ – good for a party! 🙂
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Looks lovely Lili, but personally I prefer my Dragons to be Red ones. It’s a Welsh thing! 🙂
Best wishes, Dookes.
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Fair enough Dookes!! 🙂 Hey, if you
ever wanted to make it a Welsh cake you could also add marzipan daffodils – link here: http://artifunct.com/2011/05/09/the-good-the-bad-and-the-daffodils/ Have a great weekend, you and Mrs Dookes! 🙂 x
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This is absolutely beautiful Lili! You are so talented and this cake leaves me speechless – the roses! I have played with marzipan a little and thanks for all the details 🙂
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Thank you so much Judi and you’re welcome! It’s really sweet of you to say that and it’s boosting my confidence in decorating. I hope you can have more fun playing with marzipan roses. I saw some daffodils earlier and posted them in the comment above for a Welsh friend if you’re interested! Have a lovely weekend! 🙂
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Lili, I am a professional cake decorator so believe me when your cake is absolutely lovely. When I was learning to do Butter Cream roses, I stood at the sink in my kitchen, making rose after rose. I spent about 2 1/2 hours practicing before I got them right. I think your dragon is adorable. Julie
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Thank you so much Julie!! Ok, I’m now completely reassured! 🙂 I didn’t know you were a professional cake decorator – Would love to see some of your cakes and the buttercream roses… I’m getting a bit more motivated about decorating! Have a lovely weekend! 🙂
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I have been a cake decorator for almost a year. I am almost completely self taught. The key is practice, practice and more practice. Oh, and don’t be too critical of your work. Almost no one is going to see the “flaws” in your cake. If you are interested maybe we could skype sometime and practice together. You can email me at wordpess email if you are interested. Julie
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Thanks for the tips Julie about practising and the flaws. I’ve never really skyped but it sounds like an interesting idea… will e-mail you soon! 🙂
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Beautiful cake and photos!
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Thank you Jenny! 🙂
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