You’re invited to our winter tea party

Our winter floral tea party, to be precise. And we have all the inspiration, recipes and accessories you need to make this winter wonderland of deliciousness yourself – whether you’re baking for a get-together or baking gifts for loved ones.

Winter Floral cake

This showstopper of a cake will make a beautiful centrepiece to an afternoon tea, or a truly spectacular festive dessert that’s sure to impress friends and family. Now, you may well be thinking ‘I’m not artistic enough to create that!’, but worry not, our makes-it-easy icing nozzles and icing cutter sets do the hard work for you. You won’t believe how easy it is to create your own winter floral bouquet of icing flowers.

First, make your roulade. You can follow our delicious roulade recipe, leaving out the fresh fruit and cream on top.
For the flowers (other than the white roses) make up a batch of buttercream and separate into 3 bowls, leaving one plain, colouring one green and one red. We used our Russian Piping Nozzle Set to create the flowers, using the star, rose and open tulip nozzles. Fill a bag with buttercream, attach one of the nozzles, aim at your cake and squeeze until you have a beautifully formed flower – it’s as easy as that. Dot them around your cake, leaving room for the rest of your festive foliage.
To create the stunning white roses, we used white icing modelling paste and our Easy Rose Cutter. Simply roll out your modelling paste, cut with the cutter, fold in half lengthways and roll up from one end to the other, securing the ends together with some edible glue. You’ll find full instructions on the packaging.
For the leaves, you’ll want a dark green buttercream; fill an icing bag and use a leaf icing nozzle to create simple yet effective leaves to dot around your flowers.
To make the pine cones, roll some brown fondant icing into a large teardrop shape to form the base. Next, roll up a small ball of the icing, flatten and curve slightly and stick to the base with a little edible glue. Repeat until it looks like a pine cone. Be sure to leave part of the surface bare so you can stick the pine cone to your cake. We then added some white icing to the edges with a paintbrush for a festive finish, but you could also dust with icing sugar. Once your pine cone is fully formed, attach to the cake wherever you fancy with a little blob of edible glue or icing – you could use leftover buttercream from your flowers.
Add any other finishing flourishes you fancy – perhaps fill in a space with another flower or add some more leaves, or add some winter berries with rolled up red icing.
Now, stand back, admire your genius, and invite others round to do the same. Enjoy!

Winter Floral Biscuits

Now aren’t these just the prettiest biscuits you’ve ever seen? They’ll look beautiful laid out on a plate to hand out to guests – cue modestly slipping in that you made them yourself – and they’ll make a lovely home-made gift to loved ones too.

Start by making your favourite biscuit dough. If you don’t have a favourite recipe, you can follow the basic biscuit recipe on our blog. Roll out your dough to around 1cm thick and stamp out shapes using our Double Sided Cookie Cutters (or other shapes of your choosing).
Once your biscuits are baked and have been cooled on a wire rack, use the cookie cutters to cut fondant icing to place on top of each cookie.
To make the foliage, we used our 5 Star Shaped Cookie Cutters Set on dark green fondant icing to create the ferns, and our Holly Leaf Cutters on a paler green icing for the, you guessed it, leaves. And then we simply rolled little balls of white and red icing for the berries, and little sausages of green icing for the sprigs.
For the roses, follow step 3 from the cake above, using both red and white fondant icing.
Finally, for the finishing touch, you can add handwritten messages. We went with ‘noel’, but you can personalise them with the recipient’s name if gifting, for that extra personal touch. Now, if you’re a master icing calligrapher, you can go freehand with the writing on your biscuits – just grab a piping bag and royal icing and away you go. We are not. Thankfully, we had our Letter Stamps on hand to make it really easy to look like we are, and you can too. Simply stamp the letters onto your icing, and pipe royal icing over the top. Voila – professional results in seconds.

Perfectly presented

Want to gift your beautiful bakes to family and friends? Our lovely Christmas presentation boxes and bags are the perfect way to present your cakes or biscuits to the lucky recipient. You can check out the rest of our Christmas baking range on our website, where you’ll find coordinated cake stands, tableware and even napkins to create the ultimate winter tea party.