I won!

I had a BLAST at the Let's Eat Cake Fundraiser last night! I am extremely competitive so I thrive in the stress of safely transporting and setting up everything for competitions. This was my first cake competition, but I was mentally prepared by watching lots of Food Network coverage of the Oklahoma Sugar Art Show competitions. That's the most prestigious wedding cake competition in the nation! One day, I'll be there...

Anyway, back to Let's Eat Cake! The bakers were allowed to set up their cakes approximately 3-4pm. Then the judging was to take place until 5pm and then we were allowed to enter and prepare for the public entrance at 6pm. My cake made the trip across town perfectly fine so I was thrilled! I managed to get the whole thing inside...and then I broke the bow off the front as I was putting the fabric around the base. Oh well! I did my best to "glue" it back on with some royal icing, but it just didn't want to stay put. I happened to have a Willow Tree piece that my cousin gave me at my bridal shower (thank you, Heather!). I brought it in case the bride and groom on top of my cake didn't make the trip. Since they were ok, I used the Willow Tree couple to stand in front of the bow and hold it in place. I also hid a tiny Tupperware under the orange fabric on the right-hand side of the bow ribbon. Apparently no one noticed it and the wooden couple didn't look TOO out of place. Phew! Here's what my table looked like when I left the room for the judging:


The plates on the table were left for the judges to taste. The cake I prepared was White Cake with Chocolate-Kissed Raspberry filling so I put XOXO on their plates in chocolate frosting and placed a raspberry over each O (get it, chocolate-kissed???). When we checked into the contest earlier that day, we drew our table assignments at random. God was smiling on me because I drew table 2! If you look behind my cake to the left, that is the entrance the public came through. Table 1 was actually on the other side of the door all by itself so I have a feeling a lot of people overlooked it. :( My table was the first one people saw and pretty much everyone tried my cake! I imagine, by the time people got to table 30, they were a little sick of cake... My table location couldn't have been more perfect! Oh, and a special thanks to Elise who gave me the white cake recipe and helped me pick out the pink, white, and peach fabric with which I decorated my table!

Since we drew tables at random, no one knew who were professionals and who were amateurs (except the judges). Here are the other entries into the competition. The first cake with the "R" on it is by Cyndi Richardson, who is another Wilton Instructor at Michael's. The second cake with the white roses was made by a woman who took Course 1 and Course 2 from me. It was exciting to see what she made, especially since she hasn't taken any of the fondant classes yet!































































































































































My awesome grandparents drove down from Rockledge, FL to be at the competition with me. We were able to grab a quick bite to eat before the competition and they even helped me tear it all down afterwards. Also, my other grandpa made the plywood cake board that supported the whole cake! Thank you so much guys!



Elise and I took a picture with Kerry Vincent, as seen on the Food Network. Rumor has it that she was VERY hard on the cakes when she was judging!

Paige Beck from WCJB TV 20 news (the local news) was there with her camera crew. The camera crew didn't get my cake at all, but they announced the winners on the 11pm news so it was exciting to hear my name on TV! I went to bed with a smile on my face, literally! haha!

Here I am receiving my first award for the Crowd's Favorite in the Amateur Division from Melissa, the event organizer, while Kerry Vincent announced it. I was really excited to get this award because that's what cake decorating is all about - pleasing the client! Accompanying this award was a gift pack from Michael's which included a large rolling pin (which I actually don't have yet), a fondant smoother, meringue powder, and luster dust.

Here, Melissa and I are posing with my second award which was for Best of Show in the amateur division. I was also very excited about this award! I tried to use as many different techniques on my cake as I could - gum paste flowers, gum paste modeling (the bride and groom topper), stringwork, piping, etc. - in an effort to get this award. This is the prize I coveted most of all! And I was hugely surprised that this honor came with a new stand mixer!!! Can you believe it!?!? I'm so thrilled! It's a white 5.5-quart Cuisinart and I think I've found another love in my life (sorry, Adam, Nani, and my KitchenAid Mixer). This one has a timer on the side and 12 (yes, 12) speed settings. Man, I can go to TOWN with my mixers now! Watch out cakes, here I come!

Here's a fun shot of all the winners...let's see if I can remember everyone...Left to right...
Heavenly Cakes by Neil won Best of Show for Professionals
me
Lisa Menz from Cakes by Lisa won Most Original Design for Professionals
Cyndi Richardson won Most Original Design for Amateurs (Yay, Cyndi!)
Debbie from Ms Debbie's Sugar Art won Tastiest Cake for Professionals (Great job, Gail! She took the classes from me too and she does all Debbie's baking.)
Whatsername won Tastiest Cake for Amateurs
Whatsername won Crowd's Favorite for Professionals


Cyndi and I showing off our winnings! Look, Cyndi's apron pattern matches her cake! Coincidence??? I think not! Haha!
And Lourdes made me pose with both of my plaques visible.



Last and CERTAINLY not least, here's an amazing photo of all the people who were there to support me last night. Thank you all SO much for your encouragement! It means a lot to me to have such awesome family and friends. You guys paid the steep entry fee AND gave up your evening to support me. Thank you so much, Nicole, Shelby, Grandma, Elise, Lourdes, Grandpa, and Lorelei!Thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way - June, Cyndi, Chris, Pam, and Elaine! June and Cyndi were my Wilton instructors so I learned all the important basics from them. Chris and Pam helped me troubleshoot my tulip-making. And Elaine came to the rescue last week with last-minute instructions when I decided to attempt bridgeless stringwork for the first time!

And, of course, thank you to everyone who supported me from afar. For your sake, I won't name everyone but here's just a few: Mom and Dad, Robin, Mr. and Mrs. Judge, all Mom and Dad's friends and coworkers, Grandma and Grandpa Mitchell, and all my extended family. Your emails and phone calls of love and encouragement were really special to me. I am blessed to have all of you in my life! And, no, I didn't forget the most important person - Adam! Although he had to go out of town this week, I know he was there in spirit. I love you, Adam, and I hope I always make you proud!

Whoa, did that sound like an acceptance speech? Sorry about that - didn't mean to go all Golden Globe on you! I just wanted to make sure you all knew how much you are appreciated!

Romantic Escape

I wrote this post yesterday afternoon, but didn't have time to post it to my blog before the competition:

I am super excited about the Let's Eat Cake Fundraiser tonight! I have probably worked over 200 hours on my cake in the last 3 weeks so I'm ready for it to make its debut! The title of my cake is Romantic Escape, and it's meant to represent the moments during a wedding celebration that the bride and groom "escape" from reality and are only aware of each other.


I have heard people say that, when entering a competition, you shouldn't try to please the judges or the public - only yourself. If you make yourself happy, that's the best you can do. I am a firm believer in that theory! I can't control what others think about my cake, but at the end of the day, I'm proud of it! This cake was far from easy, and I tried many "firsts" on it, including the gum paste tulips, the huge gum paste ribbon and bow, the gum paste bride and groom, and the bridgeless stringwork on the top tier.

In fact, to show you that I hit many hurdles, here is the first groom I attempted to make. He's fat and stumpy! After making this groom, I learned that you have to form his legs and torso, let them dry, and THEN assemble them! To make the bride and groom on this cake, I formed the bodies with gum paste and allowed them to dry for several days. Then, I dressed them, little by little, allowing things to dry before I added too much more. It's a slow process but I'm much happier with the results. I mean, would you want to see this guy on your wedding cake? I hated him so much I didn't even give him a head or fix his broken arm! Haha!


And here are the many tulips I tried before I got one I liked (they're in order from the first one I made on the left to one of the ones on my cake on the right):


And, finally, here are some of the details on my cake:

The gum paste bride and groom embraced/danced (depending on your interpretation) atop the cake in a field of gum paste tulips. Wires should never be inserted directly into a cake, even during cake decorating contests in which fake cakes are used. To avoid getting points knocked off, I made a fondant plaque to sit on top of the cake. The wires from the leaves and flowers were inserted into this plaque so that they didn't disturb the cake underneath.

Stringwork is often revered as a technique that only master decorators can perfect. I disagree! With patience, a steady hand, and a little bit of knowledge, anyone can do it! If you'll recall, I put stringwork on my swan cake that I took to the ICES Convention last summer. The stringwork I did here is different in that there is no "bridge" under it, meaning the bottom of the stringwork is not connected to the cake! Bridgeless stringwork gives the impression that the icing is defying gravity and it's very awe-inspiring! I searched high and low for a tutorial on how to do bridgeless stringwork and finally emailed the Florida ICES Representative, who finally gave me the answers I needed! I'll make a post in the future on how to do both types of stringwork.


I came across a whimsical tulip design in one of my cake decorating magazines and recreated it with royal icing on one of the tiers. I also came across some instructions for how to make traditional-looking columns. Sure, you can buy clear or white columns from the store...but they look like plastic (because they are)! Making the columns added an additional skill to my cake.

And last, but not least, here are the stars of my cake - the gum paste tulips:

To make these tulips, I loosely followed Nicholas Lodge's directions as well as Pam's, another decorator from Ocala, advice. I made my own cutter to create the petals and adjusted it to be what I considered life-like. Tulips are one of my favorite flowers so I used this cake as an excuse to buy lots of them! I could have bought the stamen and pistols, but I thought it would add yet another skill to the cake if I made them from hand. Of course, that added even MORE time to the whole process. I'll make a post about how to make the tulips - check back later!

Petit Four Success!

Thank you to everyone who ordered a box of petit fours from Ph.D.-serts! Our first holiday sale was a success with 19 pre-ordered boxes! We have 5 extra boxes for sale today, and we're donating 24 petit fours to the Graduate Student Organization bake sale for charity. Thanks again!

Let's Eat Cake Fundraiser!

I'm SUPER excited about what's taking place next Tuesday evening! A wedding coordinator (Melissa from Masterpiece Weddings) in Gainesville is organizing a huge fundraiser for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The fundraiser is a wedding cake competition for both amateurs and professionals. As soon as I heard about the competition last fall, I've been planning the cake I want to make! I had planned to start working on the cake in October so I could be relaxed and have plenty of time...but life happens! I didn't get a chance to start working on it until the end of January! I've been working on the cake every spare minute I have and it's really starting to take shape (which is good, because I have less than a week left)!

The wedding cakes entered in the competition are all made of styrofoam, but each entrant has to bake sheet cakes to serve to the judges and the public for a taste test. There are 4 judges that I know of - one of which is Paige Beck from the Gainesville news station. I'm going to be taping the news all night next Tuesday in hopes to see my cake on it! Another judge that many of you may know is Kerry Vincent, from the Food Network Challenges. She knows a lot about cake decorating and organizes the most presigious wedding cake competition in the nation so it's very exciting (and nerve wracking) that she'll be there to critique my work.

The doors will open at 5pm for the public (tickets are $25 in advance and $35 at the door) and then there will be a cake auction at 6pm. The cake auction is just another opportunity to raise money and the cakes entered into the auction are totally separate from the competition. So, I have a lot of work to do this weekend! I have to make a cake for the auction, make enough sheet cakes to serve 150 people, and finish my styrofoam wedding cake! Dang, I better get busy!

I'll post pictures of my cake here as soon as I can. The judging is all anonymous so I don't want to risk getting disqualified if I post the pictures too soon! Thank you to those of you who are coming to the event to support me and to those who can't make it but are there in spirit!

Monopoly anyone?

This week, my friend Thomas asked us to make a Monopoly-themed cake for his friend Cara's birthday. This hit close to my heart because Monopoly is my all-time favorite board game! However, this wouldn't just be any other cake...it was our first order for an ice cream cake! Yummy! They wanted chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. Since I worked in the Publix bakery for a couple of years in high school, I had an idea of how to make them.

I leveled two thin pieces of chocolate cake, and placed one on the cake board. Then, I wrapped an acetate strip (you see these wrapped around Boston Cream Pies...they're not edible, but they're food-safe) around it. If you let the ice cream sit on the counter for about 20 minutes, it gets soft enough to spread on top of the piece of cake. This is where the acetate strip comes in handy because it holds the soft ice cream in the shape of your cake. Then, place the other chocolate cake on top and freeze until it's solid again. We froze it for a couple of hours and then Elise came over to help decorate it.



I had already made some gum paste Monopoly money, a thimble game piece, a hotel, a house, and a die. We piped properties around the sides of the cake and wrote "Happy Birthday Cara" on the top to go with all the sugar pieces I'd made. Too bad no one wanted to play Monopoly with me when we finished the cake....

Happy Valentine's Day from Ph.D.-serts!

Say Happy Valentine's Day with custom-made petit-fours from Ph.D.-serts! To order your box of 4 adorable chocolate petit fours for $7, email Elise or myself at phdserts@gmail.com or leave a comment right here! We need your order by February 12th so we can get the petit fours ready by Valentine's Day!

She's a Pro!

We always knew Nani loved to have her picture taken, but she had the opportunity to have a professional photo shoot a few weeks ago! Adam and I went to Disney for his birthday on January 19th, and our friends Elise and James came over to play with Nani mid-day. Elise took the opportunity to practice with her new camera and Nani apparently loved all the attention!

Here she is trying to do her "serious" face. She wants you to think that she's so used to her picture taken that she doesn't even care to smile anymore. No, she's not super excited that someone new is taking pictures of her. No, she couldn't care less that she's the center of attention right now. And no, that squirrel running by means nothing to her!

Oops! She just couldn't hold it anymore! That smile just popped out! She was kidding about all that other stuff. She's really having a blast and she just can't contain it anymore!

Oooh, a squirrel...how nice of you to drop by...

This one is my favorite. Nani loves this fire hydrant. Actually, she really just loves to get her leash all tangled around it. This hydrant is right in front of our house and it's located in her favorite potty spot. She loves to run around the spot while I frantically try to keep the leash clear of the hydrant (which is hard since she is short and so am I)!
Thanks for the great pictures, Elise!