Christmas Day will arrive all too quickly for us at Juniper Cakery so we shall now be taking our well-earned holiday from virtually anything work related as we celebrate the festive season! This time of year is always crammed with lots of magic for us as we attempt to re-cooperate from working 7 days a week at 17 hours a day (indeed) and enjoy a birthday, Christmas festivities, Hanukkah and a sparkling New Year too!
We’ve been especially busy this season due to refurbishing our design space and our consultation room. Things are still not quite finished yet, but we did manage to get our studio Christmas tree up, decorated and twinkling with lights. So before we bid adieu to cakes, cupcakes, cookies and anything else confection-related here’s a little sneak peek at our Christmas cheer!
As the snow clouds draw in closer to the UK and the 25th quickly races around the corner we wish everyone out there a wonderful holiday season with plenty of happiness and as the age-old quote says… eat, drink and be merry!
Winter is almost in full swing and with the icy and blustery weather making it’s way around us in the UK at moment we’ve got quite the cake for you to re-create at home! Our fun and festive Melting Snowman Cake is not only quick and painless to make, but it can even be adapted so that you can decorate it with the kids over the holidays! You can even set out lots of different sweets and candies and just leave them to let their creativity do all the work. Why not head on over to our FREE tutorial via the Craftsy.com blog for more!
Decoration-wise we love the idea of little fondant ear-muffs nestled onto the head in place of a knitted bobble hat. Some other adorably festive ideas would be to use chocolate coated pretzel sticks for twig arms, add a fondant robin perched on top of the head, wrap a sugar paste / fondant scarf around your snowman’s face or add some extra customisation with different colors.
For a festive cake decorating party fit for children (and big kids aka grown-ups) why not pre-ice your snowman with the board, melted snow and hat before supplying lots of mini cookies and candies with some royal icing and to the table for guests to decorate with!
Adding a knitted look to winter inspired cakes needn’t be a chore full of silicone moulds and matching up sections of sugar paste / fondant. In our Melting Snowman Cake tutorial we share a quick and easy technique that helps mimic the look of cosily knitted items!
Gingerbread houses are always instant crowd pleasers at any Christmas party so why not head on over to the Craftsy.com blog for our handy tutorial on how to create your own simple yet sweet gingerbread cookie house! It’s really not as scary as it seems. All you need is your own go-to gingerbread cookie recipe, some time, a little planning and lots of royal icing!
We created our own first gingerbread house of the season with rustic forest green royal icing flooded onto each cookie panel and nestled the entire house into a sweet snowdrift of textured royal icing. Flooding is a great technique, if a little tricky for a beginner. It’s fantastic for adding a good amount of colour to your gingerbread house before you even begin to decorate it!
Our quick step-by-step tutorial via Craftsy.com’s blog features some advice on what candies to use, how to assemble and ‘glue’ the walls together and even a few ideas on some treats and goodies may be good for a more glamorous gingerbread house design.
For the first week of December we helped everyone get into the festive spirit with our cookie week of tutorials that included spiced snowflake sugar cookies, rustic winter trees and festive Christmas wreaths. Now it’s cake week and today we share how you can create a fun knitted winter hat at home complete with an adorable fluffy pom pom on top! Christmas is always a fabulous time for fun novelty treats so this vibrant cake is perfect for any lively get-together. You can even add cute cut out faces and extra color to make this design great for the kids’ table.
How to decorate a cosy woolly hat cake!
Materials and tools needed…
1 x half ball/hemisphere shaped cake on a decorated board or drum
Red sugar paste/fondant
White sugar paste/fondant
Snowflake plunger cutters
Edible glue
Veining tool
Cocktail stick
Pizza or pastry cutter
Paintbrush
Cake smoother
Step 1:
Take some white fondant and add a peaked shape on top of your ball tool. Smooth down any bumps with a cake smoother.
Step 2:
Roll out red sugar past/fondant and cover your ball cake. Trim the excess fondant neatly.
Step 3:
Take some more red fondant and shape into a thick rope before using a rolling pin to flatten it out. It doesn’t matter if the strip rolls out a little uneven as it will just add a thick fabric look to your hat! If you keep the fondant rolled out to a slightly chunkier thickness when you add a knitted pattern it will look more ‘soft’.
Step 4:
To make the pom pom roll out a ball of white fondant and and texture with a cocktail stick with a scratching/jabbing motion. Attach to the top with a cocktail stick and some edible glue.
Step 5:
Add a knitted stitch look by making V-shaped notches with a veining tool around the hat. Keep in mind the direction of the knit!
Step 6:
Cut out some sugar paste/fondant snowflakes and attach using some edible glue and a paintbrush! Of course, you’re more than welcome to use cut out stars, trees, holly berries and leaves, bows, stripes etc.
This fun cake is perfect for a more novelty themed Christmas party or dinner plus you can customise it to suit any colour palette or theme. Why not cover a cake board with thick royal icing before nestling a finished hat on top to mimic a woolly hat lost in the snow! We love the idea of re-creating this cake in a deep forest green before adding ochre or light tan fondant star patterns and pom pom before painting with edible gold paint for a truly glistening cake.
This best part about this cake is that it’s relatively simple and fast. We decorated this design in 1 hour and 10 minutes, but obviously if you’re less experienced or you’re adding further decorative accents this may take up to a half day to finish; which still leaves enough time for a well-deserved rest so you can admire your work!
Creating cookies as gorgeous and delicious Christmas gifts is a wonderfully fun and sweet (pun fully intended) thing to do. Every year we love the fresh aroma of heart-warming gingerbread cookies or our spiced sugar cookies filling every room. As an extra tutorial, because we’re oh so generous, we’re showing you how to decorate festive Christmas wreath cookies using royal icing (click here for our recipe) and some simple circle shaped cookies!
Outline and flood ice your cookie with white royal icing. You can skip this step if you’re a little anxious about flood icing, but if you’d like to give this technique a try have a look at our rustic Christmas tree tutorial (and simply flood with icing the consistency of honey and skip the texturing step… you’ll need the cocktail sticks and teaspoon for this). Leave to set for 12-24 hours. You can get away with adding extra royal icing decorations after a few hours of flooding your cookie so long as you’re careful.
Step 2:
Take some green royal icing and using a piping bag fitted with a small leaf tip add some textured leaves in the ring around your cookie on top of your flooded icing. Pipe so that the leaves hang over the edge of your flooded icing.
Step 3:
Keep adding lots of lovely green royal icing leaves to make the wreath fuller. Leave to set.
Step 4:
To add a frosty looks pipe out lots of small dots of white royal icing onto your wreath’s foliage. Leave to set!
Step 5:
With a piping bag filled with red royal icing and fitted with a ribbon piping tip pipe out your bow’s loops. You can either pipe out a horizontal figure of eight at the top centre part of your wreath or two horizontal ovals that meet.
Step 6:
Add the tails to your festive red bow by piping out two wavy lines of ribbon from the base of your loops.
The great thing about whipping these festive wreath cookies is that they’re perfect for a traditional themed Christmas dessert table and they look oh so heart-warming packaged in glimmering treat boxes or bags trimmed with holiday ribbon!
Whipping up sugar cookies is definitely something fun and tasty to do when the colder winter months are just around the corner. We especially look forward to creating our delicious spiced sugar cookies (our thinner and crunchier variant of the traditional gingerbread cookie) once it’s time of pull out all of the festive trimmings! This festive season we’ve shared our popular spiced sugar cookie recipe and now we’re showing you how to flood ice them and add a wonderful texture to help create rustic inspired Christmas tree cookies!
Visit our blog post here for our go-to royal icing recipe. We use this recipe for every royal icing project as it’s pretty adjustable and we’ve never had any issues with it’s consistency. If you find your icing too thick add a little lemon juice and test. If you feel as though your royal icing may be too thin simple add a little icing sugar to thicken!
How to royal ice rustic Christmas tree cookies…
Materials needed…
Royal icing the consistency of thick runny honey
Piping bag
small round plain piping tip
Cookies (either sugar or gingerbread)
Cocktail stick
Step 1:
Always work one cookie at a time as you don’t want your royal icing outline to dry out before you flood your icing! Begin by outlining the cookie using a piping bag fitted with a small writing piping tip. Don’t touch the cookie with the piping tip or bag as this is the wrong way to create an outline and will lead to shaky lines! You want to start by touch the cookie and lightly piping out a little icing before lifting the royal icing and bag off the cookie. Keep pressingly and piping icing out but move above the cookie so that the icing falls tidily onto the surface!
Step 2:
With your outline still wet outline add a teaspoon (approx.) of matching royal icing inside and help move the icing around using a cocktail stick. If you’re not looking to create the texture look then need to aim for a smooth surface. It sometimes helps to drop the cookie a few times on it’s back to help level out the icing.
Step 3:
To create a bumpy texture use a cocktail stick to dab into the icing creating small peaks on the cookie!
Step 4:
Add some little white royal icing dots clustered in sections on the iced Christmas trees to help create a snow covered look perfect for the winter season. To create the frosted look use a dry paintbrush to then lightly drag one edge of a still wet royal icing dot outwards.
Before adding further royal icing on top of flood work it’s always best to wait from 6-10 hours or else you’ll risk damaging your hard work. Finish with some brown royal icing flood work underneath for the tree trunks or perhaps even leave the trunks un-iced if your in a hurry!
These cookies are perfect set out on a festive cake stand at a party or placed into treat bags finished with bows to be given away as delicious Christmas treats! If you’d like to make Christmas tree ornaments remember to cut or poke a hole into the cookie right after you’ve cut the dough out.
Every winter time, as soon as the slightest hint of Christmas shows up, we excitedly whip up batches upon batches of our go to ‘gingerbread’ cookies in a variety of fun and festive shapes! Our own recipe is a little different to the traditional gingerbread cookie fare as we prefer thinner cookies with more of a crunch so instead of adding bicarbonate of soda we, over the years, have adapted our standard sugar cookie recipe into the delightfully thin, crisp and light gingerbread variant we create every Christmas!
Simple gingerbread spiced sugar cookies recipe…
Ingredients and materials needed to make the cookies… (creates approx. 25-30 cookies depending on size)
200g softened butter
200g caster sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon allspice
1 tablespoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons ground ginger
400g plain flour (plus extra to dust)
1 lightly beaten egg
Snowflake cookie cutters
Rolling pin
Cookie baking tray
Silicone matt or parchment paper
angled palette knife
Step 1:
Pre-heat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4 and prepare a flat baking tray with either a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
Step 2:
Add your syrup, spices and sugar together in the bowl of a stand-up mixer. If you like darker and spicer cookies add some more to taste!
Step 3:
Add in the softened butter and cream your ingredients together on medium speed.
Step 4:
Once incorporated the lightly beaten egg along with the flour and mix on medium speed once again. Try not to overmix or your cookies will be more likely to spread when baking!
Step 5:
Quickly mould your dough into a ball, wrap with cling film and leave to chill in a fridge for 1 hour.
Step 6:
When ready knead the dough a little and roll out onto a flour dusted surface before cutting out your cookie shapes!
Step 7: Carefully lift your cut cookies and place onto a baking tray with a palette knife. Set in the fridge for 30 mins.
Step 8:
When ready pop into your pre-heated oven for approx. 10-15 minutes or until the edges are a golden brown. Remove and leave to cool on a wire rack!
Now it’s time to show you how to pipe out wonderfully sweet (pun fully intended) royal icing patterns onto your freshly baked and cooled snowflake cookies! This take a little practice and should be relatively pain free, however, if you run into a spot of bother working with royal icing you’ll still be left with pretty and tasty cookies if you either leave your cookies plain or simply smothered with royal icing and dotted with fun sprinkles!
Ingredients and materials needed for our quick royal icing recipe… (enough to ice 12-25 cookies depending on how much is used per cookie)
Whites from 1 medium egg
188g icing/confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice (and extra to wipe down your bowl and whisk attachment)
Kitchen scales
Stand-up mixer with whisk attachment and metal bowl
Small round writing piping tip
Disposable piping bag
Step 1:
Wipe down the bowl of your stand up mixer with lemon juice along with your whisk attachment.
Step 2:
Add the whites of 1 medium egg to the bowl and whisk on high speed until white and frothy.
Step 3:
Add in the icing/confectioner’s sugar and mix until incorporated.
Step 4:
Finally add in the lemon juice. You need your royal icing to be the consistency of runny honey so add a little more lemon juice if you find your icing too thick.
To pipe royal icing detail onto your snowflake cookies…
Step 1:
Add your royal icing to a piping bag fitted with a small round piping tip.
Step 2:
Beginning in the very centre of your cookie carefully pipe lines out to the tip. Make sure that you don’t touch the cookie with the royal icing the entire time. You want to start by touching the cookie and lightly piping out a little icing before lifting the royal icing and bag off the cookie. Keep pressingly and piping icing out but move above the cookie so that the icing falls tidily onto the surface!
Step 3:
Add smaller details in by lightly piping out small dots, lines and teardrops around the edges of the snowflake!
Step 4:
To add a little sparkle sprinkle granulated sugar over the still wet royal icing. If you’d like a more shimmery look wait until your icing is full dry (this make take from 4-6 hours) and carefully dust the icing with white lustre dust.
You should now be left with a plate full of incredibly cosy and festive looking snowflake cookies (that’s if you’ve not eaten them all…). We’ve bagged up ours to give away as extra little gifts this Christmas (sugar cookies generally last around 4-6 weeks depending on humidity) with gold ribbon and pretty gift tags! We’ve even baked extra spiced sugar cookies featuring small ribbon holes punched into the tops so that we can add then to the Christmas tree later on!
Amidst the flurry of sparkling Christmas treats, designs and decor we created this adorable tea and macarons cake featured a tea drenched fondant rabbit peering out over an edible teacup and saucer! This pastel hued cake is the perfect addition to a fun afternoon tea themed party with it’s bright fondant macarons, shimmering fondant pearl necklaces and gold painted tea paraphernalia. Whilst we adore winter festivities and themed this vintage inspired design was a delightful break!
An initial vintage look was applied to the design with clusters of swiss royal icing dots around the sides. This was inspired by the vintage and antique lace trims sewn onto handkerchiefs, doilies and tablecloths. This element was kept fairly simple as intricate hand-piped lace would have perhaps overpowered the design and looked a little too busy.
The vintage inspiration was further strengthened by the addition of shimmering fondant pearl necklaces draping down one side, a luxurious quilted cake board studded with edible sugar pearls and a simple trim of ivory grosgrain ribbon around the base of the cake itself.
Edible teacups are one of our favourite things to create. They can be fairly time consuming due to waiting for the paste to set fully before getting to royal ice all of the pieces together. Once we put together the cup and saucer we hand painted some detail along the sides with edible gold paint.
To give the cake a slight whimsical touch we added the fondant macarons onto the cake in little ‘toppled’ formations using cocktail sticks to help hold each fondant on at different angles created a sort of balanced look!
This fun and adorably vintage styled cake design would be ideal for a spring or summer birthday party, but it can easily be adapted to fit the current seasonal frostiness; add small piped snowflakes onto the sides, embos the board with snowflake plunger cutters, change the colour palette to glimmering cold hues and perhaps add a melting snowman into the freshly brewed cup of tea. We love the idea of swapping the cup of tea for a warming deep cup of hot chocolate featuring fondant marshmallows and changing the macarons for candy canes!
Hurrah! Christmas is coming! Whilst this is ever so exciting we understand that whipping up (pun fully intended due to the nature of this blog post) festive treats for the holiday season need to be both striking yet stress-free. That’s why for our collection of Christmas cake, cupcake and cookie decorating tutorials and recipes we’ve tried our best to keep them simple. This week we begin our festive series with some delightfully easy Meringue Christmas Trees!
How to whip up easy Meringue Christmas Trees…
Ingredients needed
60g egg whites (room temperature works best)
120g caster sugar (this needs to be caster sugar as it dissolves perfectly in a meringue)
Green gel or paste food colour
Note: As a general rule you need double the amount of caster sugar to egg whites so if you need to make a large bowl of meringue keep this in mind!
Materials needed
Piping bag
828 Ateco piping tip
Cookie sheet/tray or any flat baking tray
Parchment paper or silicone baking mat
Clean kitchen paper towels
Lemon juice
Step 1:
Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 2/300F/170C and line a flat baking try with either parchment paper or a silicone mat.
Step 2:
In the lemon juice wiped (this rids any fat residue with can make a meringue seriously fail) bowl on a stand-up mixer add your room temperature egg whites and whisk on high speed for a few minutes or until lovely stiff peaks are formed!
Step 3:
Add in your food coloring and mix for around 20 seconds or until fully incorporated. Don’t worry if your egg whites begin to look a little ‘clumpy’ or if they all seem to congregate inside your whisk. Adding the sugar next ‘loosens’ them.
Step 4:
Gradually add in your caster sugar a tablespoon at a time as you whisk on high until glossy, stiff peaks form.
Step 5:
Fill a piping bag fitted with a 828 piping tip with your green meringue mix and shake the bag down to rid yourself of any unwanted air bubbles.
Step 6:
Pipe a row of Christmas trees at least 2 inches apart on your tray. To do this simply pip as your would with cupcake buttercream/frosting yet a little taller.
Step 7:
Place in the oven on the lowest rack for around 1 hour. To prevent the tops from browning add a thin sheet of foil to the top tray of your oven and increase your baking time to 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Step 8:
When baked remove and set aside to cool. You can then work on some decorations like fondant/sugar paste stars using rolled out fondant or sugar paste icing, some star shaped cutters and a little pearlescent, gold or silver lustre dust! Attach any extra decorations on with a tiny dab of melted white chocolate and you should be left with a miniature forest of festive trees.
There are lots of fabulous ways you can use these adorable edible Christmas trees for holiday treats. We added ours on top of a red velvet cake smothered with rustic and white cream cheese buttercream before dusting them lightly with a little icing sugar to create a quaint snowy scene.
Some great ideas on how you could decorate cakes and cupcakes with your easy Meringue Christmas Trees are to nestle them on top of tasty cupcakes, add them around the edges of a freshly baked and iced cake, or your could even serve them up on a silver platter just as they are!
Piping a buttercream swirl is one of the first things a baker learns and one of the first techniques for a good cake designer to perfect. Sometimes, however, a quick and stress-free frosted cupcake is all that’s needed for a quick party or a box of cupcakes as a thoughtful gift! We’ve put together three pretty yet pain-free ways to frost up a batch of freshly baked cupcakes; perfect for last minute parties or for the ensuing holiday season. Why not head on over to our post at the Craftsy blog for more?
