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.
