Woodland and nature inspired cakes are one of our favourite styles of wedding cakes to design and make. We love so many aspects of wilderness from overgrown gardens to awe-inspiring mountain landscapes that have to admit quite the pangs of excitement when a happy couple share their nature influenced cake ideas with us! This woodland themed three tiered cake is no exception of course.
This tall cake features a deep middle Cherry Bakewell flavoured (almond cake with almond oil buttercream and black cherry preserve) tier. The cake is flourished with sugar bramble berries, hellebore flowers, damson blossoms, ruffled scabiosa flowers, various fantasy berries, golden feathers, edible moss, painted bugs, various mushrooms and white chocolate bracket fungus!
One of our favourite elements of this cake are the sugar bramble (or blackberry) berries! They’re incredibly time consuming, but done well and with a healthy dose of patience they can look so much like the real fruits themselves. Plus we adore the quirkiness of them.
The couple wanted some elements of gold included in their cake so we used gold pearl stamens (these are such a favourite in the studio for adding a touch of glamour to floral sprays that we’ll be stocking these soon), gold lustred damson blossoms, champagne glimmer dusted bracket fungus, golden feathers, edible gold glitter sprinkled in with the ‘moss’ and a gold ribbon to trim the board.
The addition of the small fondant muchrooms, bracket fungus and moss adds quite a carefree, quaint and nature-loving look to the overall design especially partnered with the usual florals and bramble berries! Each mushroom is fondant or white modelling chocolate with light hand-painted accents!
This design sure was a pleasure to create. We loved every aspect from the glimmering fondant bees to the unusual and striking scabiosa flowers!
We based this design loosely on a stunning gold sequin gown in Elie Saab’s A/W 2012 collection. We simplified the design with plain ivory tiers and large sugar magnolia flowers featuring gold dusted centres. Originally, sugar Juliet roses were to feature perched upon each tier, however, we thought that a more structured floral would work better and also add a more sleek look to the end design.
To add a touch of the romantic we covered and trimmed the board with blush pink fondant and a gorgeously sumptuous liquid gold ribbon finished with our usual double looped bow held with a crystal tipped pin. The board itself ended up being somewhat reminiscent of the Miss Dior Cherie perfume bottles and packaging!
The ‘sequin’ look can be a fairly time consuming and costly process, but it’s certainly worth it if you have the time, resources and patience and if you’re looking for a show-stopping technique! We lost count of how many large bottles of edible gold paint it took to paint this.
We created the magnolia flowers ourselves, as with all of our florals. To begin the process of flower making we always sit down and analyse photographs making notes of texture, sizing, curve, petal count and colour. There are times, however, when a little creative licence is needed so that a particular bloom works with a design rather than against it. These white magnolias were inspired by the Milky Way variety, but instead of the deep pink centres we created them out of ochre gum paste and stamens dusted gold.
