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Grace good on you. Mind you the boiled cake recipes are really easy to do from scratch and have lots of measuring out, that's the bit my kids adore, and cracking eggs too of course! LOL!

I thought blanched Almonds were just the skinless ones available in packets in stores. Without skins, you'd not need to put them in water.

Grace

I don't know if your talking about the same kind of cake mixes we have over here but I love them and is the only way to make a cake. You can doctor them up to where no one knows the difference. I have this favorite I do and everyone loves it. Course it doesn't compare to the cakes I've read that you all make and it even puts mine to shame but I try and my Hubby likes it. So go for it Grace, What do you have to loose.LOL.

I noticed that blanched almonds were on sale in the bulk bins at the supermarket, so I bought a bag of them. They're already gone. You'd think my pesky family never got any treats.
I've got the packet mix Christmas Cake. It's an Edmonds one, and you can't go wrong with Edmonds, can you?
It's the Wellington Christmas parade this Sunday already. Grace Junior's best friend has her party in the city in the morning, and then I think we'll wander down to secure a nice (sheltered!) spot to watch the parade. She is in the Johnsonville one in a couple of weeks time - her dance school has a float. Must charge up the video camera! I really can't believe it's that time already.

I am making Christmas cakes to be sold at a local Garden Tour and Craft Fair in a week's time and would like your opinions on what I should sell them for. There are both round and square ones, of about 22 - 23 cm and I have decorated the top with blanched almonds and cherries, rather than icing them. They probably cost about $10 - 12 to make. Would $25 be reasonable, do you think?

AJ, you did well making them for $10-12 for that size cake. 22-23 cm is a fairly large cake - $25-$30 would be feasible.

$19.99 seems like a lot to pay for a cake you still have to mix and bake yourself. I make 2x 22cm cakes for one of my students every Xmas and charge him $12 in total - that just about covers the cost of ingredients - he's always so grateful, that I give him my time and the electricity involved as a Christmas present - for his part, instead of handing over $12 cash, he buys me a couple of bottles of nice wine (which cost him considerably more than $12, but also have that Xmas present feel).

I think the blanched almonds are the white ones, without their brown skin :wink: