Welcome to our first cake design development blog post in partnership with The Happy Egg Co. Our development posts will help take our readers through the cake design, recipe testing and trend forecasting process. We’ll show you what is involved in designing a cake and it’s recipe, how to gather inspiration, creating colour palettes and what fads in the cake world to look out for!
Time for Tea
2011 and 2012 saw a trend in the ‘boozy cupcake’, so much so that it became a category in the National Cupcake Week’s list of competitions, but for those who remain tea-total (or those who overindulged in mulled wine at Christmas) a tea infused cake, cookie or cupcake is still a luxurious and tasty treat!
Flavours
To begin our research and development we sat down with a nice cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge made with none other than Happy Egg Co. free range eggs in order to think of what flavour we’d like to create a recipe around. Some tantalizing flavours included Empress Grey (lighter and more floral than Earl Grey) with delicate orange blossom; darjeeling with zesty lime; peppermint tea with dark chocolate; Earl Grey with rich bergamot and lemon or blackberry buttercream; or finally chamomile with lavender (perhaps far too floral and ‘spring time’ for January). After some deliberation we settled on a fragrant Earl Grey flavour enhanced with bergamot and zesty lemon or blackberry buttercream! Alongside well sourced free range eggs by The Happy Egg Co. it is equally as important that all extracts are of the highest quality. Uncle Roy’s All Natural Bergamot extract provides the premium flavour required in any cake by Juniper Cakery.
Design ‘boards’
Another important stage of the cake development process involves gathering inspiration and creating quick design boards based on what flavour or season we initially base the cake on. Since we decided upon floral/citrus Earl Grey flavour our visual inspiration involved looking at incorporating fine china prints, begramot botanical prints, classic Wedgwood colours and detailing, traditional layer cakes, lace and doily prints and fresh lemon.
Cake designs & sketches
From our design boards, colour palettes and photographs we get a better idea of what styles we want our cake to incorporate. This leads us to the sketching phase. We quickly draw out a few different cake designs and discuss the pros and cons. Things we need to consider include what The Happy Egg Co. wants and needs, how the cake will travel (including weight, shape, size and fragility), what cake decorating technique we can teach our lovely readers, and if we have translated our chosen flavour and design board images well.
Stay tuned to find out what design we decide to create!
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