Spoon the remaining cake mixture over the marzipan layer and level the surface.

It'll end up Romney taking it, the marzipan layer hiding a really bad fruitcake underneath.

Marzipan layer thin.

The marzipan layer on a wedding or Christmas cake helps to trap moisture in the cake and stop it staling - plus it provides a smooth surface so that the final icing is neater.

Dessert, served with a small but excellent cup of coffee, was a delightful sampler: jade-colored green tea ice cream, topped with a few candied red beans; a wedge of tangerine gelatin, served in its skin; a slice of chocolate and marzipan layered cake, and several slices of sweet kiwi.

"The next incumbent could, if they chose to, put a big marzipan layer of management between them and the work.

The fruit cake, with a marzipan layer, is thought to date back to Tudor times.

Marzipan layer thin.

If the proportion of women with different attitudes to work varies among countries, might it not change over time as more women get into the marzipan layer and beyond?

In her thirties or forties, she has an established career under her belt, perhaps in the "marzipan layer" - one position below the still male-dominated senior executive level.

Burt likens the ideal mixture to a Christmas cake – mortgages and retail deposits are the cake, the marzipan layer is BOS’s corporate lending division and taking selective private-equity stakes in companies is the icing on top.

All this migration and self-conscious adjustment has left basic Sloanes – the ones who didn’t escape through the City’s magic trapdoor into serious money – as just another sub-set of the great expanded fluid middle class rather than a hierarchical marzipan layer beneath the real toffs.