peonies Archives - JUNIPER CAKERY | Cakes and Sweet Treats!

5th August 2016 // 0 Comments

Pearl Studded Peony and Rose Wedding Cake!

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!

10th March 2015 // 11 Comments

Peony Ruffle Wedding Cake with Gold Sequins!

We get excited about all of the cakes we get asked to create, but every so often there’s a cake that comes along that we just can’t get enough off. This wonderfully decadent peony ruffle wedding cake is one of those cakes. It incorporates nature (and lots of lovely green sugar leaves), glistening gold painted edible sequins, textured ruffles and a bit of a carefree feel too!

For this cake the couple weren’t too sure of what they wanted. They knew they’d like a bright and glamorous look with gold sequins to match their venue’s golden table runners and had spotted the trend of gold painted sequin cakes bursting out of the pages of Pinterest. In terms of wedding theme they had opted for a minimal white and gold look with pale floral centerpieces filled with water and gold confetti to tie everything together.

At the consultation we took note of their colour palette and made a few quick sketches and suggestions before a few final details were settled upon fairly quickly. They decided upon a four tiered circle cake with gold sequins and a pale blush pink and white sugar floral bouquet on top. With these ideas in mind we sketched more ideas afterwards and sent them to the couple who quickly picked out the peony ruffled cake with toppled gold sequins and simple yet large open peony arrangement!

To make the wired open peonies we began with gum paste pistils with a full arrangement of dusted medium sized stamens before creating a total of 60 ruffled sugar petals (20 petals per flower) that would surround the centres. For peony leaves we like to create several long slender pieces that get grouped into threes and taped together before they then are attached to the base of the flower so that the natural greens poke out from underneath each bloom.

Our design for the floral cake topper focused on a lovely crescent formation. It helps that there is two of us as this part involves a lot of holding bundles of sugar flowers in position and standing back a good few metres to judge if it’ll work or not. One of our favourite things to do when arranging sugar flowers on a cake is to extend the bouquet out a little further using leaves, blossoms or berries. This helps create a sense of drama and also makes the end design look a little gravity defying!

Simple white frosted berries with moss green and terracotta dusted sugar blackberry leaves were added to incorporate a little interest as well as to extend the arrangement and fill in some gaps.

Creating and utilising gum paste or modelling paste berries is one of our most favourite design elements to include on our cakes. We absolutely love nature; so much so that we named our bakery after our favourite berry. Krystle, in fact, was considering studying Forestry at university before heading off into the wilderness of Canada to live in a log cabin surrounded by herbs, mushrooms and moose.

To balance out the bottom half of the cake with the voluminous florals we created a wonderfully carefree toppled gold sequin effect that revealed a traditional white wedding cake tier before the tier below bursts into pretty blush pink fondant ruffles! Adding edible frills to a cake not only incorporates wonderful texture, but helps make the design look fuller and grander. It’s perfect for small and large cakes too.

What a delight this wedding cake was for us to design and create! We do admit that we wish it was still in our studio so we could still admire it.

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.