Personally I wouldn’t add any other flavourings except possibly a little alcohol to match that in the cake.

I prefer the taste of golden sugar so I sometimes use golden castor sugar, or I think Billingtons may make a golden icing sugar.

Freshly ground almonds have a better flavour than pre-ground almonds that may have been sitting around for a while. Rather than using ground almonds, buy whole blanched almonds and grind them in the blender to the texture you like. I prefer some small crunchy lumps of almond.

Use the best-tasting almonds you can get – I usually look for organic almonds and skin them by blanching in boiling water for a minute or so. Drain them and pop them out of their skins, then put them in a single layer on kitchen paper to dry them. When they’re skinned, put them on foil on a baking sheet in a low oven for five minutes or so to dry them out.

I sometimes lightly toast a quarter or so to give a stronger flavour.

Mix the marzipan to a dryish consistency which you can roll – too wet and it will be sticky; too dry and it will crack too easily at the edges. I usually do this on a sheet of greaseproof paper as I can easily turn the whole thing over onto the cake.

Once you’ve marzipaned your cake, cross-hatch the top with a knife, and put it under a hot grill for a few minutes to lightly toast it.

This gives a very good, almond-flavoured marzipan, and the leftovers make decorations or a few small sweets which usually disappear very quickly.

It was very easy to roll out — not at all sticky. I used Jane’s method of rolling it out on a sheet of baking parchment, used the tin I baked the cake in as a cutting guide, then put it on the cake marzipan-side down and peeled off the paper. Easy peasy!

On its own the marzipan doesn’t taste that interesting, but when it’s covered in incredibly sugary royal icing, cutting down the sugar seems to make sense. Jane Grigson does say you can add another 250 g of sugar and another egg to make it sweeter. I’d guess a spot of brandy wouldn’t go amiss either