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.
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?
Sometimes the most simple of tasks can be a little bamboozling and may not be so simple after all. Knowing how to fill your cakes and what to avoid can make or break that 6 tier masterpiece you’ve spent weeks designing. Head on over to the Craftsy Blog to read our top tips on how to fill your cakes to perfection!
We’ve some exciting news to share! We’re now writing over at Craftsy’s blog as well as here at our humble online abode. We’ll be talking about cakes (of course) and sharing lots of fun cake decorating tricks and tutorials! For our second Craftsy blog post we’re offering up some handy tips on tinting fondant and how to create a beautiful vintage colour palette. We even created the Parisan Macarons / Salon de Thé cupcakes below to help illustrate just how lovely a vintage colour scheme can be!
Last week we used Maggie Austin’s Fondant Frills tutorial, via Craftsy.com, to add ruffles to our spooky Witches’ Cauldron cake. Though this technique is certainly not out of place on extravagant wedding cakes the grey and black ruffles we used suited our Halloween cake perfectly! This week we’ve used a rich chocolate brown, glimmering gold and burnt orange to create a glamorous autumnal cake using the same method. We thought the frills on the Witches’ Cauldron cake resembled rugged rocks assenting a cliff face and we believe these frills resemble delicate, crunchy leaves; perfect for the season!
To find out how to create the gorgeous, delicate ruffles we used to decorate our Golden Acorn cake visit Craftsy.com for 25% off of your first cake decorating course. In Maggie Austen’s Fondant Frill class you’ll discover how to make your own flower paste / gumpaste, achieve a pretty ombre look, and create sumptuous cabbage roses. Why not catch the crafting and cake decorating bug in time for the festive season? You’ll be pretty darn popular when Thanksgiving, Christmas or Hanukkah arrives and you’ve created stunning ruffled mini cakes for everyone you love! We had so much fun frilling out fondant strips for our Golden Acorn cake and the dramatic yet subtle texture is perfect for lots of different projects. We’re already thinking of snowdrift themed tiers of ice blue and white ruffles teamed with shimmering hand painted snowflakes and quilting.
To decorate our cake we created lots of sugarpaste / fondant acorns to topple atop of our warm hued ruffle cake including one large golden acorn perched at the top; perfect for a playful yet glamorous cake. Of course, if you’re thinking of trying out this cake at home and lack the time we had why not fill the top of your cake with chocolate truffles, crumbled cookies, juicy berries or cracked walnuts.
Underneath the rich myriad of ruffles is a delicious chocolate, pumpkin and vanilla Neapolitan style layer cake filled with vanilla buttercream making this cake even more irresistible. With cold and blustery months ensuing this cake is the perfect centrepiece to cosy family get-togethers and dinners. Give our recipe below a try for a decadent treat!
Chocolate cake layer (makes one 1 1/2″ thick 8″ in diameter layer)
165g self-raising flour
165g caster sugar
165g butter
3 to 4 medium eggs
70g cocoa powder
Pre-heat your over to Gas Mark 3 / 160C / 325F and prep your 8″ circle cake pans with cake release. With each layer mix the appropriate ingredients by creaming your butter and sugar first. When pale and creamy add your eggs and any flavourings (such as cocoa powder, spices, pumpkin puree and extracts). When combined add the flour. Mix well and then pour your silky batter into your cake pan. Bake from around 25 minutes to 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean when tested.
Leaving all of your cake layers to cool on a wire rack start preparing your vanilla buttercream.
Vanilla buttercream
300g butter (stay clear of low fat spreads due to the larger water content)
350g-400g icing / confectioner’s sugar
2 bourbon vanilla pods
1 tablespoon of room temperature water
To begin your buttercream dice up your butter into small cubes before adding them into the bowl of a stand up mixer and creaming until smooth and silky. Once creamed gradually add in the icing sugar by adding a little and leaving to combine in the mixer for approximately 10 seconds. Repeat this until you have a consistency you like. Add in the seeds from the inside of a bourbon vanilla pod. To do this slice the pod in half, to scrape out the seeds inside and pop them into the buttercream. Mix for another 10 seconds.
Now you can stack up your cakes! Our layers consisted of the chocolate first, then a layer of vanilla buttercream, the layer of spiced pumpkin, some more vanilla buttercream and finally the vanilla cake layer. When decorating our striped ruffles corresponded with the cake layers hidden inside! Once your layers are stacked prepare your cake with a smooth crumb coat, chill for an hour, ice with roll out icing / fondant and make your way to Craftsy.com for Maggie Austen’s Fondant Frills class to re-create the delicate ruffles!
Craftsy.com provides online education for creative enthusiasts so they can turn their ideas into reality.Crafty’s online cake decorating courses allow you to learn at your own pace whenever you choose! Click here to receive 25% off your first cake decorating course with Craftsy.
This is a sponsored conversation written by Juniper Cakery on behalf of Craftsy. The opinions and text are all ours.
We’re always excited to try out new techniques, recipes, styles and tastes circulating in the cake decorating industry. With this in mind we were more than happy to give Maggie Austen’s famous ruffled fondant method a go courtesy of Craftsy.com!
This frilling technique is perfect for so many cake designs; not just for romantic wedding tiers. These sumptuous ruffles would add a dramatic finish to any homemade dessert from birthday surprises to Christmas gateaux and, of course, to any ghoulish Halloween cake! Though we hadn’t seen a ruffled Halloween cake before we thought this was the perfect opportunity to give it a go. As a result here’s our finished spook-tacular Witches’ Cauldron cake made using Maggie Austen’s Fondant Frills class. We would have usually rolled the strips of fondant much thinner to create delicate ruffles but in this instance we deliberately created sightly chunkier ruffles to translate the feel of jagged rock face leading up to the poisonous witches’ cauldron sitting atop.
At Craftsy.com you can learn a wealth of fun D.I.Y techniques and projects including cake decorating, sewing, knitting and embroidery as well as lots of lovely ideas for your home and garden. For cake decorating enthusiasts in particular there’s a wealth of fun classes and tutorials to help create gorgeous cakes and cupcakes. Why not try out Craftsy and get 25% off your first ever class just in time for the holidays!
The wonderful thing about learning online is the ability take things at your own leisure. Everyone has a list of commitments, responsibilities and jobs that already take priority so being able to start or pause a class on your favourite hobby obviously really helps. At Juniper Cakery we find ourselves inundated with a billion tasks and urgent post-it notes per day so when it comes to our own past times learning online is a lifesaver. At Craftsy.com classes can be saved, played and paused for when you have some spare time. Fantastic for busy lives!
Maggie Austen’s Fondant Frills class on Craftsy.com includes a wealth of ideas and tips to help create decadent and textured cakes. A few techniques in this class include how to make your own flower paste / gum paste, how to achieved subtle yet stunning ombre ruffles and how to create beautiful cabbage roses to nestle atop your creation. With so many things to learn in one class we’re pretty certain that you won’t want to stop! Why not create rainbow ruffles for a vibrant birthday, adorn the top of a pretty frilled cake with lots of delicate handmade roses or make a ghoulish Halloween mummy cake by using the Fondant Frills tutorial to re-create bandages.
Craftsy.com provides online education for creative enthusiasts so they can turn their ideas into reality. Craftsy’s online cake decorating courses allow you to learn at your own pace whenever you choose! Click here to receive 25% off your first cake decorating course with Craftsy!
This is a sponsored conversation written by Juniper Cakery on behalf of Craftsy. The opinions and text are all ours.
