Just because a cake is small doesn’t mean that it can’t be an eye-catching creation! This petite creation does just that. We created this peach peony, dusky blue hydrangea and ivory rose adorned cake recently and love that despite it’s small stature (being a 6 inch circle cake that stands at 5 inches high undecorated) it manages to appear rather grand!

Each flower was created by hand using flower paste / gum paste. The cake is decorated with a total of 3 ivory roses, 2 peach peonies, 1 peony bud, 23 hydrangea blossoms and three rose leaves. Adding a full bouquet of flowers to a cake helps create a sumptuous look and feel! Our tip is to work in threes (a lovely compositional number) and pick a focal flower and two non-focal flowers. Here we picked some peonies then paired them with ‘filler’ florals like ivory roses and small hydrangeas. For the larger flowers we stuck to having three of each and arranged them so that they were all balanced and did not fight with each other on the cake (keeping a non-focal yet large flower like a rose in a neutral colour like ivory, cream or white and a focal flower in a stronger colour really helps too). The hydrangeas, being small, are easier to work with; however, two things need to be kept in mind… 1, they are naturally bunched or grouped together so avoid dotting them around sporadically and 2, just because they’re smaller blossoms doesn’t mean that hundreds can be piled onto the cake (a little goes a long way).

To add extra detail we hand painted our fondant covered cake drum with peach / pink peonies, blue and lavender hydrangeas and pea green leaves. To paint we mixed our colours and added a little vodka (the alcohol evaporates leaving no alcoholic trace behind, but lemon juice can be used if desired).

The flavour itself is a wonderfully soft vanilla cake filled with fresh diced peaches and an indulgent white chocolate buttercream! We love the addition of fresh fruits and home made preserves to sandwich cake layers; they always add a fantastic amount of both sweetness and tang!

We absolutely enjoyed creating this cake and it may have ignited an ambition to elevate small and otherwise unassuming cakes into gorgeous centrepieces!

All photographs, designs (including all baked and decorated goods), tutorials and written content belong to and are copyright to Juniper Cakery unless otherwise stated. Please do not copy! Copying and re-publishing our work without our permission or claiming it as your own work could lead to legal action from us. If you wish to feature our work do contact us for permission.