bow Archives - Juniper Cakery | Bespoke Cakes in Yorkshire & the Humber

20th February 2015 // 0 Comments

Vintage Hat Box Cake with Hand-Painted Violets and Peonies!

Lovely hat box cakes are always popular requests for us around this time of year. They’re vintage styling and softer colours seem synonymous with the light-hearted spring season. Earlier this week we created this wonderful peony and violet themed hat box cake for a 40th birthday! It features dainty hand-painted florals and a sweet plum, peach, juniper green, ivory and blush pink palette.

The cake itself was a classic Madagascan vanilla cake sandwiched with fresh Madagascan vanilla buttercream and home-made raspberry preserve which was then iced with fragrant marshmallow fondant tinted in a lovely blush pink colour.

We created the large voluminous bow and open peony flower a few days in advance so that each could set into fluid shapes and ruffles before being handled and placed on the finished design.

Each white stripe and plum coloured scallop edging was measured and spaced accordingly before we began hand painting small peony blooms, violets, leaves and tiny berries onto each. We planned out a pattern that alternates around the cake with one stripe featuring peonies centered and in each corner and another stripe with bundles of florals placed at the top and bottom.

To balance out the peach of the sugar peony flower we decided to create an edible gift card and envelope out of white and peach gum paste which was then placed at the top opposite side of the flower. The message was completely hand-painted and left to dry before we carefully nestled it inside our little envelope!

We hope this vintage delight was enjoyed by the lucky birthday girl! The very last thing we heard about this cake was that no one wanted to cut it at all.

28th March 2013 // 7 Comments

Easter Tutorial Week: How to make an edible looped bow!

In this tutorial we show you how to create your own fantastic looped bow out of modelling flower paste. Sometimes there is nothing better and more striking to nestle on top of a bright and vibrant cake than a good ol’ looped bow! Who wouldn’t love a cake that looks like a present? It’s fun, eye-catching and guaranteed to wow both children and adults.

You can play with colour, texture (why not emboss your paste or change the stitching detail), size, add a message along a loop or even hand paint your bow to match your cake. Why not making mini ones for cupcakes too!

Easter tutorial: How to make an edible looped bow!

What you need:

Fondant rolling pin
Large knife
Coloured modelling / flower paste (or normal sugarpaste with a sprinkle of Tylo powder added)
Circle cookie or pastry cutter (approximately 2 inches in diameter)
Edible glue
Bubble wrap or kitchen roll
Candy melts
Quilting roller tool

Step one: Roll out some flower paste and with the pastry cutter cut out a circle for the bow’s base

Step two: With your knife carefully slice two strips (3 inches in length and 1 inch in width) of rolled our flower / modelling paste

Step three: Take two of the strips and cut v shaped notches out of one end of each strip

Step four: Take your quilting toll and roll along the edges to create a lovely stitch effect to all strips of ‘ribbon’

Step five: Roll up a little bit of bubble wrap or kitchen roll to lay your bow tails over to create shape

Step six: With your knife carefully slice eleven more strips (3 inches in length and 1 inch in width) of rolled our flower / modelling paste

Step seven: Add the stitching details to the edges to strips. Loop all of the strips and pinch the ends together with some edible glue. Hold the loops in shape using some rolled up bubble wrap and kitchen roll. Leave to dry.

Step eight: Using candy melts affix your loops to the circle base. For our bow we attached six loops onto the base and on top of those loops we fixed the bow tails on either side and then ‘glued’ four loops before adding one loop stood up in the bow’s center