Some fondant and sugarpaste accents only need a slight curve to them, for example daisies. Cake decorations like these would need something shallow to help form them and sometimes some unlikely items fit the bill. This weeks CAKE101 offers a tip that we use to set a little shape to more open flowers.
“To help form fondant flowers that only need a shallow curve to them the lids to miniature jam jars (the kind you find in hotels) are perfect! These are great for flowers that need a slight lift to the tips of the petals.”
We have been excited to create this wedding cake for months now. It encompasses everything we love in this year’s wedding cake trends; birds, ivory lace, gold sheens and soft blues! Our brief was to design, bake and decorate a Blue Tit themed wedding cake with ivory roses and blue hydrangeas pulled together with a vintage feel.
To achieve a lovely rustic and vintage look to the gold of the cake we painted the sheen onto the surface once iced with mustard coloured fondant. Using a large, soft paint brush and applying the sheen in three coats helps to get a luxurious taffeta look.
Every single flower on this cake was hand made by yours truly! There is a total of three large, fully bloomed ivory roses and forty individual hydrangea flowers. A total of three hours work!
The sweet little Blue Tits that adorn the middle of the cake were sculpted from modelling paste. We then hand painted them in shades of blue, turquoise, green, lemon and black.
The actual cake inside is a soft chocolate and vanilla marble cake with surprise shocks of pink, filled with vanilla pod infused buttercream and smoothed down with a delicious chocolate ganache!
From the adorable little hand painted birds to the taffeta inspired gold effect and vintage 50s/60s feel lace border we loved creating every part of this cake! It was definitely hard for us to see it leave.
One thing is definite for us at Juniper Cakery; our friends and family get excited every time a special occasion arrives. This weekend we took all of the ‘subtle’ hints from our dads and created two very special cakes for Father’s Day! Yesterday we shared an elegant Wedgwood inspired cake we made for one of our fathers and their love for all things Wedgwood. Today we get to share this lovely bird house cake we created for a keen bird and garden enthusiast.
This cake was fun for us to make especially as we had the chance to try out some new techniques. We created a wood grain effect on the drum and roof, painted a rustic yet worn look to the actual house, hand painted a lovely little blue tit bird and hand made some subtle white primroses too.
To create this cake we stacked our layers, stabilised them all with a dowling rod and then carved the cake to shape before smoothing over with chocolate ganache. We then created templates based on the cake’s dimensions, cut out the bird house panels in fondant and fixed them on before working on the rooftop and adding detail.
The cake itself is a super luxurious triple chocolate fudge cake; chocolate cake filled with chocolate buttercream and them smothered with a delicious chocolate ganache! We were, of course, extremely happy to have eaten a slice or three! It was a shame to have to cut it up though.
We’ve had lots of requests for a tutorial / recipe on how to whip up basic buttercream over the past few months. It would seem that the frosting referred to as simple, basic and even as American buttercream can be somewhat elusive, annoying and tricky. Don’t worry; we’ve found this to be the case too!
Over the years we’ve tried lots of different recipes and we’ve learnt two important things…
1 - Find ingredients you trust
Your basic buttercream recipe is relatively simple. You mix together butter, icing / confectioner’s sugar and a tiny bit of water (or milk, but this means your frosting doesn’t last as long) before adding some flavouring or colour. Sounds simple… but then there are annoying little things that can mess this recipe up like what brand or type of butter you use, how fine or course your icing sugar is and even how much flavouring you add or if you use a liquid food colourant!
The best thing to do is to find or create your own set recipe. Make a few batches using different brands of butter until you’ve found one you enjoy working with (some butters can be hard to mix and will leave you with lots of small clumps in your otherwise smooth buttercream). Use gel paste colours to change the colour of your buttercream as liquid colourings can make your buttercream sloppy. Use a very high quality extracts or essences when adding flavour to your buttercream. Store bought tends to be very watery whereas a good extract/essence is highly concentrated allowing you to only add a small amount for maximum flavour. We’ve tried and tested all sorts of flavourings and once we found these all natural extracts and essences we haven’t used any other; we highly recommend them!
2 - Develop your buttercream intuition
Use the below recipe as a guide but don’t be afraid to play around with ratio! This will help you develop your intuition when it comes to baking and decorating. Don’t just follow a recipe… utilise it! Everything in a recipe is there for a specific reason beyond taste… e.g, the butter in buttercream is a binder and the icing sugar is essentially the stabilising ingredient; without each other or if you have too much of either one you have a mess on your hands.
Consistency-wise you want frosting that feels and looks between a mousse and peanut butter. It needs to be at the same time soft and creamy and stable at room temperature. You should be able to pipe without the buttercream running out or refusing to be piped out.
When it comes to taste you want to be able to taste both main ingredients equally before you add flavouring. Always test your buttercream before you flavour. The sugar should never over power the butter and vice versa.
The recipe below makes enough buttercream to pipe six cupcakes. Use this recipe as a jumping off point to help whip up frosting perfect for you and how you work.
What you need…
250g room temperature butter (try to only use butter or spreads with a fat content similar to butter… low fat spreads have a higher ratio of water which messes with consistency & stability)
250g icing / confectioner’s sugar (you can sift if you like, but a good mixer should whip out the lumps)
1 teaspoon room temperature water or flavouring / extract / essence to ‘loosen’ the frosting
Optional: Gel paste food colour (gels work best as they won’t change the consistency of your frosting)
Step one: Cut up your butter into small cubes. We use a serrated knife to do this as the serrated edge causes less suction than a straight edge one. This means you shouldn’t be fighting desperately with getting the butter off your knife; a hazardous thing to do at best!
Step three: As the butter is creaming add in the icing sugar a bit at a time. Also, add the teaspoon of water or flavouring.
Step four: Mix your frosting at full speed at 30 second intervals; checking each time. Once lovely and creamy add in your food colouring and mix until fully incorporated!
You should now be on your way to buttercream nirvana. After a while of making batches of buttercream and really interacting with it (always tasting and analysing the consistency) you will earn your buttercream intuition badge!
As dark clouds turn to blue skies over the UK we couldn’t think of a better way to enjoy the month of June than with fresh, tart, fruity flavours! Everywhere you go you’ll see slices of lemon and lime bobbing in iced fizzy drinks, in ice creams, sorbets and ice pops and even squeezed on fish and chips on a trip to the sea side.
The citrus taste of lemon and lime also happens to make a delicious cake, which is great news for us! We’re yet to meet someone who doesn’t love a classic lemon drizzle cake but we wanted to add a third flavour to the mix. We considered mango, coconut and raspberry before we decided upon passion fruit!
The passion fruit adds a luxurious tropical kick to an old British favourite so our minds are made up; this month’s Happy Egg Co. cake will be lemon, lime and passion fruit flavoured! The vibrant tones included in this month’s colour palette were naturally inspired by the fruits themselves and the golden hues and zesty greens are perfect for June and July.
Sometimes you don’t have to spend hours upon hours hunched over a desk or work top to make a cakes or cupcakes look striking. For cakes with a beautiful colour baked into them (like Red Velvet) the work is already half done! This weeks CAKE101 cake decorating / baking tip is all about adding simple decoration to you already beautiful baked treats!
“A quick and easy way to decorate cakes and cupcakes is to sprinkle cake crumbs on top! Crumble some of the spare bits of cake (after levelling or coring) and add atop your frosted cakes! This works great with coloured cake.”
This tasty little cupcake pays homage to one half of Juniper Cakery’s past addiction to cans of cherry cola. Don’t worry, she’s OK now, but those were dark days fuelled by cherry laced soda. These days she is strictly tea-total and we deemed this cupcake a safer way for her to enjoy her favourite fizzy treat! It’s still pretty addictive, so be careful re-creating the recipe below…
This Cherry Cola cupcake is a subtle cherry flavoured cake swirled with two toned and dual flavoured Cherry and Cola buttercream then finished with bright pink sugar crystals! It’s perfect for the summer; but we think it’d go down a treat at an 80s themed party or shindig! If anyone does this please send us a picture so we can live vicariously through you; we love the idea of a kitsch ‘The Breakfast Club’ themed do!
Step one: Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 3/325F/170C
Step two: Cream the butter with sugar and once well mixed add in the Cherry Essence, flour and then the eggs.
Step three: Set out twelve cupcake cases in your pan and fill each case 2/3 full.
Step four: Bake from around 12-18 minutes or until a golden brown on top and leave to cool on a counter.
For the buttercream…
We make our buttercream using our own intuition. We’ve tried countless recipes; all of which failed to pass our test (and stability) tests. It’s best that you begin to develop and ‘eye’, ‘feel’ and ‘taste’ so that you know when your frosting is perfect for you. For starters though, the recipe below is a rough guide…
Step three: To get a fun two toned/dual flavoured effect scoop your cola buttercream down one half of a piping bag fitted with an 855 piping tip/nozzle (this tip/nozzle creates lovely ruffled buttercream). After doing so the other half of your bag should be free for you to add your cherry buttercream.
Step four: Now you can pipe lots of generous and tasty swirls of buttercream on top of your cupcakes once they have cooled down and sprinkle liberally with sugar crystals.
You should be left with cake stand filled with tempting cherry cola cupcakes! It’s up to you if you want to share them with anyone else… but we wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t!
We created a fun gardening themed cake with strawberries last week. We thought that with the lovely British strawberry season in full swing it’d be the perfect time to show everyone how to make fondant strawberries and strawberry blossoms!
The strawberry gardening cake we created was not only filled with delicious British strawberries, but featured some bright fondant / sugarpaste strawberries on top… complete with a fully edible gardening trowel too!
Step one: To begin your strawberry take some red fondant or modelling paste and form it into a rounded conical shape
Step two: To make the ‘seeds’ (or more accurately called achenes) on your strawberries simply take your veining tool and indent notches in rows
Step three: To make the leafy calyx section on top of your strawberry roll out some green fondant / modelling paste, use a marguerite plunger cutter to cut the shape and affix on top with some edible glue
Step four: Use the 5 point end of your tapered star tool to indent into the middle of your calyx topped strawberry… now you have a lovely edible fondant strawberry; perfect to nestle on top of cupcakes and cakes
Now to make the little strawberry blossoms… The following tutorial is a good basic way to make any 4-5 open petal flower. You can use this to make cherry blossoms and hydrangea flowers too. To make different flowers play with shaping or pinching the blossoms into more defined shapes.
Step one: Make a cone with a rounded bulb-like end from some white fondant or modelling paste.
Step two: Using your tapered five point star tool indent a star into the rounded end.
Step three: Separate into full petals using scissors to cut further into the star indentation.
Step four: Using your fingers lightly pull each petal out to separate and press down on each petal.
Step five: To ruffle your petals use the bulbous cone tool to flatten and press into your flower.
Step six: To add the yellow colour that is featured in strawberry blossoms lightly dust some lustre dust onto the petals.
Step seven: To finish off your strawberry blossom cut a few stamens, paint the ends with edible glue, push them into the centre of your flower, finish them by dusting the stamen tips with some lustre dust and leave to dry in flower forming cups.
Step eight: Roll out some green fondant or modelling paste, cut out some leaves and leave to shape and dry on forming waves.
Now you should have some strawberries and strawberry blossoms. These handmade berries are wonderful additions to summer cakes and cupcakes!
Sometimes when you’re filling an order for 100 plus cupcakes that require softly curved fondant petals and leaves you’ll get to a point when you look around only to discover that you have no more room on your forming cups, waves or foam pads. This weeks CAKE101 offers a tip on some essential tools to keep in your tool kit for situations like this!
“To add shape to fondant petals or leaves why not sit them in the curves of paint palettes or even teaspoons. This is especially handy if you run out of space on forming cups, waves and foam pads!”
British strawberry season has begun! Hurrah! It just wouldn’t be summer without them would it? We’re excited for picnics with full punnets of strawberries, fancy afternoon teas with sweet strawberry jam on scones or delicious strawberry ice cream at BBQs.
To celebrate we whipped up this Eton Mess cupcake using home made strawberry preserve, buttercream flavoured with natural strawberry essence and vanilla extract, and some lovely sliced strawberries! We also topped the treat with a hand made meringue! Yum!
