Tutorial - Simple Sugarpaste Roses

BakerLou Tutorial - Simple Sugarpaste Roses

These easy roses are perfect for putting onto cupcakes or celebration cakes and need no specialist equipment!

This tutorial will take you through the process of making these pretty flowers with photos every step of the way. I’ve found this to be the easiest way to learn a new technique so I hope you find it easy to follow. If you need any further assistance, please feel free to message me through my Facebook page or website.

EQUIPMENT

All you need for this simple method of rose making is as follows:

* Sugarpaste in the colour of your choice – approx 100g

 * A sharp knife

 * A sheet of plastic such as cellophane, a plastic file pocket or a freezer bag

 * Your hands!

 And that’s it! No special equipment needed at all.

METHOD

Knead your sugarpaste until it’s pliable and roll into a sausage shape – the fatter the sausage, the bigger your rose will be.

Cut off the end piece and discard, then cut six slices of roughly the same size. Cover the rest of your paste with cling film or pop in a freezer bag to stop it drying out.

Work with one piece at a time and keep the other slices covered. Lay the first slice on your work surface and cover with your plastic sheet. Push down hard with the palm of your hand (at the base of your thumb) to thin out the paste.

Next run your thumb firmly around the edges of the petal, half on the petal and half on the plastic. This will soften and thin the edges of the petal. To make the bud, start curling the petal inwards with your fingers, keeping it fairly tight.

Repeat the thinning process for the next petal and wrap around your bud, overlapping the seam of the bud. Use your fingers to gently curl the edges of the petals back and pinch around the base to keep in place.

Now all you have to do is keep thinning petals and wrapping around until you have the size of rose you want.

 Once you’re done you’ll notice that the base is now rather large. Don’t worry, that’s how it should be! Simply cut off the excess paste with your knife or a pair of scissors.

Leave to dry overnight or until needed (do not keep sugarpaste decorations in an airtight container or fridge as they will spoil!) and then attach to your cake or cupcake with a little Royal Icing or sugar glue.

Happy Making ❀

Tutorials Now in Store!

We now have three brand new tutorials available to purchase on the BakerLou website with lots more to come! Like all our step-by-step guides, each one is illustrated with photos for each step of the way with clear instructions. Feel free to visit our facebook page if you have any questions or you'd like to show off your work!

First up are these gorgeous Simple Flowers which are made without any cutters at all! Find the complete guide here.

Next, we show you how to make realistic and beautiful Wired Roses. Find the tutorial here.

And, last but not least, the pretty Open Rose - find it here.

We have quite a list of requests so expect a lot more tutorials on the way very soon, including more sugar flowers, baking and decorating basics and complete step-by-step cakes - we might even show you how to make one of our very popular Bottle Cakes!

Happy Making!

BakerLou -x-

New Tutorials Coming Soon!

Here at BakerLou, we have been amazed at the response to our tutorials and have received some fantastic feedback! So we're currently working on some new step-by-step photo tutorials that will be appearing on our website very soon. If you have any requests for new tutorials, leave us a comment here or tell us what you think on our facebook page

If you missed some of our recent step-by-step guides, you can find them here:

Cupcake Bouquet 

Sugar Carnations

Coming up next, learn how to make these pretty flowers!

How to make Sugar Carnations, step-by-step tutorial

Here I'm going to show you how to make these sugar carnations, I made them for the first time recently, they're pretty easy really and the effect when they're finished is lovely!

So... here's some of the items you will need:

Carnation cutter, calyx cutter, sugarpaste, CMC or tylo powder (optional), sugar glue, cocktail stick, florist wire, florist tape (optional), rolling pin, food colour pastes (optional), paintbrush, Icing sugar to dust your surface.

You could also use petal paste for these flowers if you wish.

Start off with kneading your sugarpaste so it's nice and pliable - I like to add a bit of CMC (Edible Cellulose Gum) as I find it easier to work with and it dries harder.

Now prepare your wire, for this tutorial I used 22 gauge white paper covered wire. Bend the top of your wire (you may need pliers for this) over to make a closed hook, dip in edible sugar glue* and insert into a small ball of sugarpaste. Pinch with your fingers so you end up with a small cone shape.

                                                     

It's easier to leave this to dry for a while so it's well stuck to the wire, but you can carry on straightaway if you wish. I leave mine to dry in a cake dummy.

Ok, now you're ready to go! Roll out your sugarpaste thinly and use your cutter to make one petal shape. While working on each stage, I cover the rest of my icing with cling film to prevent it drying out too much.

Next, take your cocktail stick and roll it back and forth over each petal section to frill the edges. 

Dab some sugar glue over the surface of the petal with a soft paintbrush and insert your wire through the centre:

Gently fold the petal in half, it should look like this:

Now dab on some more glue to one third of the shape and fold over up and across. Turn over and do the same to the other side. Gently pinch the bottom and there you have your bud!

 

All you need to do now is make and frill more petals and just insert the wire through until your flower is the size you want. If, like me, you only have one size of carnation cutter and want to make your flower bigger, simply cut the petals in half and drape around the edges! You can always tease the petals into the position you want them using a dry paintbrush.

To finish off, use a calyx cutter (if you don't have one of these, a flower cutter will do) to cut a shape from green sugarpaste and insert the wire through, using edible glue to secure it in place.

If you'd like to make your finished carnations into a spray arrangement, twist your wires together and wrap with florist tape. To colour, use lustre or petal powders. 

VARIATION

To make variegated flowers, add dots of pink sugarpaste and roll together before cutting out your petals.

Cut out at random and make as before. When finished use a fine paintbrush to paint lines on the petals (I used Pink paste colour by Sugarflair mixed with a little water)

*Edible glue is easy to make yourself - simply put a blob of sugarpaste in a small glass/dish, add a splash of water and blast in the microwave at 30 second intervals until dissolved.

So there you go, sorry I waffle a bit! Happy making :)

We'd love to see your work so please feel free to post on our facebook page

Free Cakes for Kids!

Here at BakerLou, we are always willing to help with charity work and we recently heard about a new nationwide initiative called Free Cakes For Kids. Their mission is simple - to provide a special cake for a child on their birthday as some families can find this a difficult task - whether it's a money issue or difficult family circumstances. Every child deserves a birthday cake!

The scheme matches up families with volunteers in their local area (BakerLou have joined our nearest scheme Free Cakes for Kids UK - Braintree as a volunteer baker. You can find their facebook page here) You don't have to be a baker to help, the scheme will also need volunteers for delivering cakes, spreading the word, referring families who would benefit from the scheme, plus fundraising or asking businesses to donate ingredients or cake boards and boxes.


You can find out more about Free Cakes For Kids UK on their website here - Get involved and make a child smile on their birthday!

Competition time! Win a Hamper!

It might just be your lucky day!!

Here at BakerLou, it’s Valentine’s competition time! How would you like to win one of our gorgeous new Luxury Hampers? Perfect to give to someone special this Valentine’s Day!!

These hampers are made of willow and have leather straps – the contents are as follows:

3 x Vanilla Cupcakes with  a buttercream swirl and fondant decorations

3 x Chocolate Cupcakes with buttercream, topped with fondant and decorations

1 x Box of Chocolate Truffles

1 x Gingerbread Heart with the message of your choice piped on with royal icing

1 x Packet of Vanilla Fudge

1 x Box of Boozy Truffles (Whisky & Rum)

Each hamper will be lovingly packed and tied with pretty ribbon.

All you have to do to win is go to our Facebook page and ‘share’ the picture (same as the one above!) marked COMPETITION to your own wall and ‘like’ our page. Easy as that!

To get a bonus entry, find us on Twitter and Retweet our competion Tweet!!

RULES:

Competition closes on 1^st February, a winner will be chosen at random from all entries and announced on our Facebook page.

Entrants must “Like” the BakerLou Facebook page ( www.bakerlou.com/BakerLouCakes)

Entrants must “Share” the competition picture to their personal or business Facebook page (Wall).

A bonus entry will be given if a BakerLou competition tweet is retweeted.

Entrants must be over the age of 18

Hamper will be delivered to the winner by Royal Mail 1st Class in time for Valentine’s Day (February 14^th 2012)

New Gift Hampers!

We are very excited to announce that our new Gift Hampers are now available to order through the BakerLou website!

We were absolutely stunned by how popular our Christmas Hampers were and we've had some lovely feedback from customers, including "Probably the best present I will give this Christmas - THANK YOU!" and "Bought one of your Christmas hampers for a present and they LOVED it - said everything was very yummy!! Thank you!! xx"

Requests have been pouring in lately for hampers that are available all year - not just for Christmas - so we've put together a selection of popular products plus some new ones that will be perfect for any occasion, whether it's a romantic gift for Valentine's Day, a gift for Mother's Day or a birthday treat for someone you love.

Our standard bamboo hamper is priced at £25 (plus £7.99 1st Class Recorded Delivery) and contains 6 cupcakes (3 vanilla and 3 chocolate) beautifully decorated with fondant icing and buttercream, a box of 4 seriously chocolately Truffles and a large Gingerbread heart that is decorated with a fondant heart and piped with the message of your choice.

Our luxury version is packed into a posh willow hamper and is priced at £30 (plus £7.99 1st Class Recorded Delivery) and contains all of the above but has the added extras of a packet of our gorgeous vanilla fudge and a box of our boozy whisky and rum truffles.

Free local delivery is also available in the Rayleigh and surrounding areas!

Go on, treat someone!

How to make a Cupcake Bouquet, step-by-step!

As this is a question I get asked quite a bit, I decided to photo my latest cupcake bouquet every step of the way to show exactly how it's done. It's fairly easy to do and by using different colours and decorations you can create a beautiful bouquet that not only looks lovely but tastes great too! 

You will need:

A suitable container (I like to use metal buckets that are easily available from florist suppliers, they are approx 6" across - you could also use terracotta pots or anything else of a suitable size that takes your fancy), plastic disposable cups, various coloured tissue paper, sellotape and a stapler.
Optional: cellophane, ribbon, sugarpaste, elastic band, edible glitter.

You also, of course, need a batch of cupcakes plus enough buttercream to decorate them! You will only need seven but my recipe makes twelve so plenty to nibble on later ;)

This time I used good old vanilla for both cake and buttercream but you can use any flavour combination you wish.

Method:

To start off, you need 7 plastic cups, arrange them into this shape:

Now, at this point, you can either staple them together as they are or you can do as I did and wrap some tissue paper around each cup (sellotape comes in handy here just to keep in place) before stapling for an even lovelier effect, like this:

If you'd like to use cellophane, now is the time to wrap it around your pot as it's much more fiddly to do it later on - cut a big square of cellophane, turn your pot upside down and secure with an elastic band, don't worry that it looks awful, we can pretty it up later!

Next, take a sheet of a different colour tissue paper which will complement your icing colours, cut in half and lay out flat across each other:

Lay the tissue sheets over the top of your container and gently push your cup arrangement downwards pushing the tissue paper with it.

Ok, you're ready to ice your cupcakes! For these ones, I used a Wilton 2D nozzle in a piping bag and painted a stripe of red extra colouring up the seam of the bag before filling with buttercream to get a two tone effect with the icing.

Another optional bit now! To make the cakes a little bit more special, I rolled out some red sugarpaste and used a plunger cutter to make some flowers, added one to each cake and then dusted each cupcake with some edible glitter.

To assemble your bouquet, simply pop a cupcake into each cup holder! I then tied a length of red ribbon around the pot to cover that elastic band!

And there you have it, a gorgeous bouquet of cupcakes! Perfect for a present :)

Happy Baking :)

Do something special this Christmas...

This has nothing to do with cakes and baking at all but it's a lovely idea that I wanted to share with you.

Recently I came across a website called Post Pals. The idea is to send a card or small gift to brighten up the day of a seriously ill child or their siblings. It doesn't take you long to do and imagine making a poorly child smile just for a little while - well worth the price of a stamp! At BakerLou, we have already sent a gift box full of our hamper goodies to one family so we hope it was enjoyed!

At this time of year Post Pals have a number of extra special schemes to make these brave children feel just a bit better. You can volunteer to write to a child from every reindeer during the festive period or you can become an Elf and send a gift around the value of £15 to a child who will really appreciate it. You can find all the details of how to help HERE. 

As part of the reindeer scheme, I am writing to a little girl who unfortunately lost her sister to a form of cancer, I've given each reindeer their own personality and put in a small gift with each letter! I'm also volunteering for the Elf scheme and I know that lots more helpers are needed so if you have the time, please think about taking part.

Of course you don't have to send a gift - I know money is tight these days - but even sending a card lets families know that someone is thinking of them so if you have a few minutes to spare and a stamp hiding in your purse, please use those few minutes to put a smile on a child's face! ☺

Happy Christmas from BakerLou!

         xxxxx