Browsing Tag

pink

4th December 2019 // 0 Comments

Festively Chic Chocolate & Candy Cane Bark Recipe!

Christmas always means sweet little treats that can be whipped up quickly on a weekend or whenever you feel like a sugar fix. Our quick and easy to make Candy Cane Bark is no exception. It’s also pink, indulgent and has tiny hits of peppermint scattered on top. Perfect for enjoying with a hot chocolate. Or why not crumble pieces into a bowl of popcorn for a Christmas movie marathon! Of course they’re great as little presents in Christmas Eve boxes, festive stockings or as dinner party favours. Keep reading for our easy to follow recipe!

Candy Cane Bark Recipe

Ingredients and tools needed…

Step 01:

Firstly, half your white chocolate pieces. You should have two sets of 200g buttons/callets or broken chunks.

After that, add one set of 200g to a microwavable jug and at 10-20 second intervals heat your chocolate. Make sure you use your thermometer to check the temperature each time you check. The chocolate should only heat up to around 31 degrees C (87 degrees F). Any hotter and your chocolate won’t set properly. Don’t worry if there are still lumps just gently stir using a butter knife and they should melt.

Candy Cane Bark tip! How to fix overheated chocolate!

If you do end up over heating your chocolate simply add a few new pieces in and mix. Check the temperature and add a little more if it’s still over 31 degrees C.

Step 02:

Prep a cookie sheet with greaseproof paper. You may need to tape it down using a little wash tape on the corners.

Step 03:

When your chocolate is melted and ready poor it onto your prepared greaseproof paper and sheet. Then gently smooth it out using your angled palette knife. Make sure not to thin it out too much. You want to aim for a nice 2-3mm thickness. Leave to set. You can pop your tray into a refrigerator for 15 minutes if you like. Don’t leave this in your fridge for a long period of time, however, as humidity and chocolate are not friends!

Step 04:

Meanwhile, repeat step 01!

Step 05:

When your next 200g batch of white chocolate has melted add in a few drops of your pink candy colour! It’s always best to start small and add a little bit of colour if you need a stronger tone. If you add too much it’s a lot harder to then lighten it.

Step 06:

Repeat step 03, but pour and smooth your pink chocolate over the set white chocolate slab you created.

Step 07:

Crush up some candy canes (likewise you can use those cute peppermint swirl candies too) and sprinkle on top of your pink and white layered chocolate bark. Now leave to set!

Step 08:

Lastly, once your bark has set it’s time to take a sharp knife and carefully cut or break into pieces.

Candy cane bark with chocolate recipe

You can easily package your bark up as gifts for neighbours or friends. These vintage style pink stripe paper bags would be look cute! Break into smaller pieces and mix with salted pretzels, homemade marshmallow cubes and mini gingerbread cookies for a fabulously festive snack mix!

22nd December 2015 // 0 Comments

Pink and Gold Macaron Studded Naked Birthday Cake!

Pink and gold naked birthday cake by Juniper Cakery

Owning a bakery and cake design business means that when it’s your birthday you can obviously have any cake you can dream of. So when Felicity’s (one half of Juniper Cakery) 32nd birthday began approaching so did the cake ideas, colour palettes, sketches, various pins, flavour lists etc etc. In the end three things kept appearing in all the different designs… naked birthday cake, macarons and the colours pink & gold. Obviously that led to the glistening beauty featured in this post - a towering buttercream skimmed carrot cake and cappuccino cake adorned with pink Eliza roses, golden silk eucalyptus leaves, 24k gold dusted peanut butter macarons and dainty pink lemonade macarons studded with tiny edible pearls.

Pink and gold naked cake by Juniper Cakery

Pink and gold themed naked birthday cake!

The macaron shells were prepped a few days before Felicity’s birthday (today) in a pink, pale pink and caramel color palette. Originally there were going to be darker pink raspberry macarons speckled with rainbow confetti sprinkles, but we decided to simplify the cake to help make it a little more on-trend and chic! Flavour-wise the 24k gold dusted (yes… 24k) macarons are ‘Nutter Butter’ filled with a Madagascan vanilla and whipped peanut butter buttercream whilst the pale pinks are our ‘Pink Lemonade’ macarons filled with a pink raspberry and lemon sherbet buttercream.

Pretty pink and gold naked cake by Juniper Cakery

Pink and gold macarons by Juniper Cakery

Aren’t these tall gold candles stylish! They’re from Party Kitsch. We’d spotted them some time ago on Pinterest (as usual - the mecca of inspiration and chic-ness) and made sure to have them ready to finish off the cake because of the various planned gold accents (leaves and macarons). Gold has been quite the ‘it’ colour for a while, but it’s Felicity favourite colour… in fact she has dreams of painting various random things gold.

Stunning gold and pink themed naked cake by Juniper Cakery

To decorate the cake we kept going back to the arrangement we used for our famous Black/Pink Forest Gateau Naked Cake which featured a crown of roses and macarons on top of the deep first tier and another crown encircling the top tier! It’s a simple yet elegant arrangement especially for a naked birthday cake. First the organic pink roses were added to the cake with small gaps left between each flower. These gaps were then filled up with glistening gold and pink macarons before the golden silk eucalyptus leaves were added for a little dimension and sparkle.

Pink and gold themed birthday

Sneaky picture of the presents! The cake was finished and photographed the day before Felicity’s birthday so of course it sure was hard for her to shoot everything without being tempted to peek inside those gift bags. In case you didn’t notice the cake, the macarons and all of the gift packaging matches our company branding - white, pink and gold sequins/dots galore! Extra gold elements were added with some sprigs of metallic silk eucalyptus leaves dotted between roses and macarons. Obviously, you can’t have too much gold.

Gold and pink birthday

Pink and gold naked cake covered with roses and macarons by Juniper Cakery

Pink and gold macaron naked cake by Juniper Cakery

We mentioned earlier the flavours of the tiers, but here’s a more in-depth mouth-watering description… the bottom tier is our soft and light carrot cake made using Chanteney carrots, fresh spices and Lady de Coverly sultanas soaked in King’s Ginger liqueur. The top tier is our cappuccino cake with Fortnum & Mason‘s Queen’s Blend Coffee infused into the batter. Both tiers have been filled and smoothed over with Madagascan vanilla and Callebaut white couverture chocolate buttercream.

Birthday naked cake with pink and gold macarons by Juniper Cakery

Pretty pink roses on a pink and gold naked cake by Juniper Cakery

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.