teacup Archives - JUNIPER CAKERY | Cakes and Sweet Treats!

24th November 2014 // 1 Comments

Vintage Tea and Macarons Cake with Cheeky Rabbit!

Amidst the flurry of sparkling Christmas treats, designs and decor we created this adorable tea and macarons cake featured a tea drenched fondant rabbit peering out over an edible teacup and saucer! This pastel hued cake is the perfect addition to a fun afternoon tea themed party with it’s bright fondant macarons, shimmering fondant pearl necklaces and gold painted tea paraphernalia. Whilst we adore winter festivities and themed this vintage inspired design was a delightful break!

An initial vintage look was applied to the design with clusters of swiss royal icing dots around the sides. This was inspired by the vintage and antique lace trims sewn onto handkerchiefs, doilies and tablecloths. This element was kept fairly simple as intricate hand-piped lace would have perhaps overpowered the design and looked a little too busy.

The vintage inspiration was further strengthened by the addition of shimmering fondant pearl necklaces draping down one side, a luxurious quilted cake board studded with edible sugar pearls and a simple trim of ivory grosgrain ribbon around the base of the cake itself.

Edible teacups are one of our favourite things to create. They can be fairly time consuming due to waiting for the paste to set fully before getting to royal ice all of the pieces together. Once we put together the cup and saucer we hand painted some detail along the sides with edible gold paint.

To give the cake a slight whimsical touch we added the fondant macarons onto the cake in little ‘toppled’ formations using cocktail sticks to help hold each fondant on at different angles created a sort of balanced look!

This fun and adorably vintage styled cake design would be ideal for a spring or summer birthday party, but it can easily be adapted to fit the current seasonal frostiness; add small piped snowflakes onto the sides, embos the board with snowflake plunger cutters, change the colour palette to glimmering cold hues and perhaps add a melting snowman into the freshly brewed cup of tea. We love the idea of swapping the cup of tea for a warming deep cup of hot chocolate featuring fondant marshmallows and changing the macarons for candy canes!

1st July 2014 // 1 Comments

Tea, Macarons & Recipe Book Birthday Cake!

It was our head baker Carol’s birthday last Sunday and of course we created her a rather lovely cake to celebrate the occasion. After a few initial ideas we set our sights on a recipe book themed cake adorned with roses, sweet treats and a rather fancy teacup! We also had to add Carol’s favourite colour purple to the cake’s colour palette to help tie it in with Carol’s birthday decorations and gifts. We didn’t even make her bake the actual cake herself!

We created a lovely little edible teacup with gum paste / modelling paste hand-painted with gold lustre dust edging and detail. Alongside this we also created a matching edible side plate for all of the delicious chocolate truffles to be piled upon!

We have an old tutorial up here to help you create a sweet edible teacup and saucer of your very own!

To add the gold detail with used some gold lustre dust mixed with a little vodka and carefully painted the edges with a fine paintbrush used only for food items. This takes quite a steady hand so practice makes perfect indeed!

Above are our Cherry Macarons, Passion Fruit Macarons and handmade sugar gum paste roses and leaves. We toppled the macarons onto each other and then adorned them with florals to add a nice little touch of whimsy!

For the macarons we created them in sorbet influenced flavours such as Raspberry, Passion Fruit and Cherry to help establish a lovely bright, Summer colour palette; perfect for a June birthday!

We added one of our head baker’s favourite recipes for Lemon Drizzle Cupcakes to her recipe book cake by hand-painting in the illustration and ingredients list. The left side of the book cake displays baking instructions for our fruity Strawberry Cupcakes filled with home made strawberry preserve.

We created a sweet yet cluttered scene with the placement of hand-made sugar roses, hydrangeas, chocolate truffles and edible chinaware!

Making the edible teacup took two hours to cut, shape and paint; it then took some patience and a few days to harden and be ready to assemble and place onto of the cake. A top tip is to use melted white chocolate in a disposable piping bag to seal the joint of the teacup and affix the shaped handle to the side. White chocolate sets fast and keeps a good hold.

Here are some of our Raspberry Macarons filled with a raspberry preserve alongside a fruity Passion Fruit Macaron filled with a lemon curd whipped buttercream.

Some of the extra features on this birthday cake are sugar hydrangeas, a gold painted braid bookmark, hand-painted wood stained board and a lightly ruffled napkin placed underneath the perched edible teacup.

We’re happy to say that we not only had the chance to actually devour a little bit of this cake, but that Carol seemed to be rather enthralled with her birthday cake!

21st May 2013 // 6 Comments

Tutorial Tuesday: How to Make an Edible Teacup & Saucer!

We love anything involving tea and we had been hankering to put together a tutorial on how to make a teacup or teapot for a while. So in this week’s tutorial we show you how to create an edible teacup and saucer using flower / modelling paste! We loved putting together this teacup and think it is perfect for summer afternoon tea themed parties, weddings and birthdays!

You can definitely fancy it up and add some whimsical fun by adding unusual sprays of sugar flowers nestled into the saucer, or make sugarpaste macarons and cookies to sit next to the cup. Why not add a little teabag string and label into the cup, copy the pattern from a favourite tea set, add some fondant ‘tea’ or create a elegant silver spoon either on the saucer or poking out of the ‘tea’!

What you will need:

Teacup and saucer
Flower / modelling paste (normal sugarpaste won’t harden and hold as well)
Icing sugar
Fondant rolling pin
Melted white chocolate
Blade tool
Edible Glue

Step one: Roll out your modelling paste to around 4mm thick and wider than your tea saucer.

Step two: Dust your sauce with icing sugar (make sure there are no lumps of sugar or this will dent your modelling paste.

Step three: Place your rolled paste into the dish and gently smooth into the contours of the tea saucer. (After a few minutes gently slide out the paste saucer to make sure it comes out easily.)

Step four: Cut away the excess paste from around the saucer like you would when cutting crust away from an un-baked pie. Leave to set.

Step five: To make your teacup handle roll out some modelling paste to about 3 inches making sure one end is tapered. Whilst it is laid on your surface begin to shape it. Keep comparing it to your teacup to make sure it’s the right size. Leave this to set along with your saucer.

Step six: Make the base of your teacup by rolling out some paste into a ‘rope’. Form this into a ring that is a bit bigger than the base of your teacup. Glue the ends together with edible glue.

Step seven: Roll out some paste and cut a circle the same size of the base of your cup. Glue this to the ring / teacup base you made in step six and set aside.

Step eight: The trickiest part is the cup itself so this needs to be checked and planned a little. Cut out a fan shape template from paper and nestle this into your cup to check how it will fit. Adjust the size.

Step nine: Using the template you created in step eight cut out the fan shape in rolled modelling paste. Place the cut modelling paste into your icing sugar dusted teacup and press slightly. Join the edges with edible glue. To reinforce the edges cut a strip of matching fondant and glue over where the edges meet. Leave to set.

Step ten: When all your pieces are set glue each together with some melted white chocolate. For the handle it helps to hold it up whilst the chocolate dries with some bubble wrap underneath.

Step eleven: If you want to create some ‘tea’ to put inside your cup then dust the inside of your cup, mould some tea coloured sugarpaste (you can use this instead of modelling paste as it doesn’t particularly need to hold) into the cup and flatten the top. Place inside your cup and gently mould further into the teacup. You can also paint the top of the ‘tea’ in a light brown colour instead of colouring fondant.

Voila! Now you have an edible teacup and saucer ready to paint, decorate and add to the top of a cake! Lovely floral sprays, polka dots and light stripes work well painted onto teacups along with pearlescent, gold or silver edges. We’re sure that whatever you do to decorate your teacup and saucer will look lovely and striking!