Beatrix Potter Cake with Peter Rabbit & Jemima Puddle-duck

Get all the details of this Beatrix Potter Cake – perfect for a baby shower or Beatrix Potter themed birthday party. All fondant and gum paste decorations with hand-painted Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-duck characters.

This precious Beatrix Potter Cake is an attempt at replicating the perfect original by Steel Penny Cakes here. 

When my client, Jennifer, first reached out about me doing this cake, I knew I had a lot to live up to. Everything Elysia makes over at Steel Penny Cakes is flawless and her Beatrix Potter Cake is famous. It’s been replicated time and time again and I really wanted to do it justice.

The original cake was made for a baby shower but my copy of the cake was for a baby’s first birthday. The thing is, this sweet Beatrix Potter Cake is perfect for either celebration!

So let’s get to it …

Beatrix Potter Cake with Peter Rabbit & Jemima Puddle-duck

The most intimidating part of this cake for me was the foxgloves flowers on the sides of the cake. The tiny bell-like flowers and the leaves in different sizes took at least a couple of hours to make. Then they were left to dry overnight.

I realized later on when I zoomed in on a picture of real flowers that mine were not botanically correct, but I felt like they were close enough for me to not have to redo them.

After covering the cakes (by paneling with fondant), the first thing I did was use Edible Arts Paint from Sweet sticks to paint on the grass and flower stalks in pink and green. I went back and used my food markers to make some darker and more defined marks in the grass.

Then I used royal icing to “glue” on the leaves and flowers… and dots of pink royal icing to do the smaller “flowers” and stalks. I also had my daughter make the white flowers used around the cake. She used a flower plunger cutter similiar to this and painted the centers yellow with Edible Arts Paint again.

For the fence, I used a wood grain impression mat to make the texture, then cut out the individual boards. It was all attached and put together with a light coating of shortening.

Sadly, this is the best picture I got of the intial “A” on top. I didn’t have a large enough cutter so this letter was hand-cut out of pink gum paste. After it dried hard overnight, I attached a lollipop stick to the back with melted candy melts and stood it up on the cake.

Jemima Puddle-duck

A Beatrix Potter Cake wouldn’t be complete without Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-duck. For these characters, I printed some images that I had sized to around 4.5 inches tall, then cut them out with scissors.

I rolled out gum paste pretty thin, then layed the characters on top and cut out the shapes with a scalpel. After letting them dry a bit, I began by drawing the black outlines with food markers. ThenI used a mixture of different colors from my Edible Arts paints to paint the characters.

Peter Rabbit

I also used food markers to go back and add some more depth to the colors. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before or not but I minored in art in college and I really love painting. I don’t do it nearly enough!! I couldn’t have been more pleased with how they turned out!

After letting them dry overnight, I attached them to the cake with melted candy melts.

Just before attaching the characters, I placed the plaque with the birthday girl’s name on the top tier. I cut it out with a plaque cookie cutter. I cut the letters with these block Tappit cutters. See how I use Tappit cutters here. I attached the letters with a light coat of shortening and I painted the border with pink edible paint.

I can’t wrap up this post without sharing the smash cake:

It was a tiny 5″ round cake covered in vanilla buttercream. Except for the white flowers, I painted on the stalks and piped on all the flowers with buttercream.

I think that’s all I can share about decorating this cake. Now, back to the basics…

Details of the Beatrix Potter Birthday Cake:

• This cake was 5″ and 8″ tiers of wedding cake (white almond sour cream cake) filled and frosted with vanilla buttercream. The cakes were baked in my favorite Magic Line pans.
• Satin Ice fondant was used to cover the cakes and all decorations were Satin Ice Fondant or Satin Ice Gum Paste. Normally I use homemade marshmallow fondant but my husband always makes it and his work schedule didn’t allow it this time. So Satin Ice for the save!!
• As mentioned above, I used Edible Arts Paint and Gourmet Food Markers for most of the artistic work on the cake. I used Americolor Forest Green, Leaf Green and Soft Pink for coloring the fondant and gum paste.
• You’ll find my royal icing recipe here I used #3 piping tips to pipe on the flowers.

Did I miss any details? I’d love for you to leave me a comment!

Happy Caking!

Rose