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Competitions

So, I've been away for a little bit. Those of you who follow me on Facebook already know the scoop and have seen the photos.

Two weeks ago I was fortunate to be chosen to compete at the Connecticut Cake Competition in their live challenge. The theme was "Child's Play" but it had to be between 24-36" tall. My usual partner wasn't able to come with me this time, but I was so lucky to be able to partner with Pam Zola of http://www.pamcakes.com/ . She's FABULOUS! Oh, and she's a great roommate too! This was Pam's first live competition, but I had complete faith in her because I know what she can do. She had placed 2nd at The Art of the Cake with an amazing painted cake...only 1 point behind the winner. Check our her website when you get a chance.

We up against some stiff competition and all the cakes turned out nice. We made a popup story book with a 3d-ish treehouse in a tree. The judges seemed to like it but they said that while it was well executed, it just didn't have the "wow" factor of the size of the others. Lesson learned. We were proud of our cake and ended up taking third place. YAHOO!!!!

Now, onto this week. Anna and I were selected as the only non-local team to compete at the Central Ohio Home and Garden Show in Columbus Ohio. On Sunday, March 7th, we gathered up our things and went to set up at the competition. Most of the things were ready, but we did get a little bit of a late start. Fortunately, we were on our game on Sunday and the late start didn't end up hurting us. Thankfully, it didn't seem to hurt any of the other competitors either.

Around 10:30 or so, the crowd started filling the chairs. I was amazed to see how many people came. Of course, they weren't necessarily there to see us, but to see Mary Alice and Geoff from Ace of Cakes! It was pretty cool to see them, and they're so very nice. Mary Alice is so tiny!

We plugged along and were able to take the last hour to fuss over the tiny details of our cake. All the cakes were coming along great. We were pleased to see that everyone created a cake to be proud of. It was also pretty neat to see the variety of ideas and interpretations of the theme "The Art of the Garden" Wedding cake.

Ours was a 2 foot tall tree with miniature wedding cakes hanging on swings. We LOVED our idea and I have to say, we worked steadily for 3 weeks on the details for the cake. We had a day where nothing really went wrong. We also knew we were taking a huge risk by doing something "non traditional" but figured this was the best time given who the judges were. We just really wanted to do this design!

Well, it worked out to be our lucky day and a risk worth taking! WE WON!!! I jumped up and down and hugged Anna then jumped up and down on the stage while trying to walk over to get the prize.

The miniature wedding cakes are only 3" tall. All the gumpaste flowers were made by Anna. I did the leaves and the big stuff as usual :)