Here’s a gorgeous wedding cake we created for the lovely Jen and Harry’s big day at Wrea Head Hall just outside of Scarborough! We pretty much have been counting down the days until we got to make this beauty that was inspired by this floral crown cake we made. It had so many things we absolutely love… lots of sugar flowers, subtle texture (those hand-piped pearls) and one amazing colour palette too (soft dusky pastels with shimmering silver and clean white)! Plus it really reminds us of the beautiful floral embellishments that run through the current Ralph & Russo collection.
Pearl Studded Peony and Rose Wedding Cake!
The base of the cake was surrounded with a crown of sugar flowers (all of which we create ourselves) including our signature open peonies, silver brunia berries, rounded eucalyptus leaves, large bloom white roses, cupped ranunculus flowers and silver dusted fern leaves! Adding florals around the base of a cake helps give an illusion of weightlessness which we love as cake (especially wedding tiers) is always heavy. Our studio space sure looked like a florist had gone crazy once every flower was done and ready to put in place.
For the inquisitive readers out there here’s a quick guide to how we ‘built’ the cake / floral crown. Building the floral ‘separator’ involved stacking the tiers on top of a sturdy polystyrene cake dummy that sits at around 2 inches high and up to 2 inches smaller in circumference than the bottom tier of cake. Once everything is secured in place with dowel rods etc it’s time for the magic to begin! For this design the larger flowers were nestled in at intervals in a repeat ‘pattern’ before lots of the lovely fillers (berries, buds, leaves, smaller blooms) are then added. It’s illegal and just plain unsafe to insert florist wires and florist tape into a cake (due to possible nickel content of the wire and also the latex in floristry tape that some people can find themselves allergic to) so everything needs to be pushed carefully into the cake dummy / separator using decorator’s pliers.
The pretty florals and foliage on this cake also isn’t just there to look nice! The large bloom white roses represent the bride’s Yorkshire roots whilst the delicate silver dusted fern leaves peeking from underneath (and behind) the florals is the national symbol of New Zealand where the groom hails from. We love when cakes involve personal touches such as these as every wedding cake should be utterly unique for and to every couple! Plus, being nerds, we always love to try out new floral arrangements and ideas.
We also started counting every single bud, berry, pistil, leaf and petal (both wired and non-wired) out of curiosity (and did we mention that we’re nerds right?). We, unfortunately, lost count at around the 550 mark, but we estimate the final count to be at around the 620 mark. There were lots of wired elements in the floral work of this cake too which is great when it comes to re-arranging elements. Sometimes you need certain petals to fan outwards or even cup the stamens or pistils more. Also, when it comes to wiring flowers you always end up with a sort of ‘fluffiness’ to the look of them.
Underneath those crisp white fondant iced tiers are… a Madagascan Vanilla flavour filled with our whipped and super silky Madagascan vanilla bean infused buttercream, Sicilian Lemon with our lemon curd and Sicilian lemon oil flavoured buttercream, and our ever popular Raspberry Chambord flavour with fruity Chambord liqueur infused preserve and pink raspberry buttercream!
The entire cake was then finished with lots and lots of hand-piped royal icing pearls that then scattered more sparsely towards the bottom of the cake. Once these were dry they were then painted individually with pearlescent edible paint that we mix up to add a little shimmer. We’re huge fans of texture being added to designs from piped pearls to fondant frills so this was a great way to make the white tiers stand out a little more.
We know we say this about every cake we finish, but this one was particularly hard to see go. Once we’d finished the entire design we admit that we had to keep peeking in at it sat there in it’s box ready to leave us. It was just too pretty! Off it went to the beautiful Wrea Head Hall for one rather glamorous wedding! Congratulations Jen and Harry!
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