Textured White. Australian Cake Decorating Championships (ACDC) held as part
of the Cake Bake & Sweets Show in Sydney at The Dome, 21-23 March 2014.
It all started with finding out about the Cake Bake &
Sweets Show (CBSS) in December 2013. A whole bunch of excited cakey emotion
that basically went like this - Oh look! It’s in March, in Sydney, we can go! Hmm…
tickets. Three day pass – bought, done. What’s next?
Wonder what’s happening at the show… Duff Goldman (Charm
City Cakes/Ace of Cakes), Sharon Wee and Sheryl BITO are going, along with tons
of other professional stars. Okay, let’s track down the timetable so we can see
everyone ten times over. Ah, no timetable just yet. What else is there to do?
Well hello there cake decorating competition. Rephrase that,
scary cake decorating competition. The Australian Cake Decorating Championships
presented by Cake Boss (Carlo’s Bakery, Buddy Valastro… anyone?) to be exact. Not
exactly scary, more terrifying, daunting and a bit of a challenge. Why? It was
marketed as the WORLDS most expensive cake decorating completion in terms of
monetary prize value.
So far just reading through the schedule of what is required
in the cake and sugar art sections. Doesn’t seem too scary. I would classify in
the “Open” category – less than two years’ professional experience, semi-professionals,
non-professionals, hobbyists and apprentices. Theme. Theme is ‘A Spring Wedding’
(for a traditional bride). Let’s just note here that ‘traditional’ was not
overly emphasised, sigh. Not even two months before the Show and we’ve decided
to enter.
Wedding cakes; spring wedding; floral wedding; colour wedding;
coloured wedding; romantic wedding; and every other girly chic wedding out. Pintrest
was visited, a selection of wedding magazines purchased (which scared Mr. Sammy
Sprinkle), wedding dress designers viewed and home furnishings. Yes, you did
read that right. A theme that stood out amongst wedding dresses and home furnishings
are textures. From silky to rough, pleats and frills, and plenty of flowers; this
is the direction our cake was headed.
Frou-frou is the word used to describe the sound silk makes
as it brushes against itself. Frou-frou is also associated with girly, feminie
and soft. What else is frou-frou-esque? Ruffles and frills, of course! Time to
design.
Okay, enough talking. Here are some pictures of the cake ‘in
the making’.
Foam Fakies. It is safe to say all competition cakes where
possible are made from polystyrene foam dummies. This allows for the maximum amount
of time spent decorating. After all it is a cake decorating competition.
Here is what we should have done before we bought the foam.
Forgetting that the ruffles of tier 3 would make the cake look two inches
bigger than it really is… Live and learn lesson learnt right here.
Three of the four tiers covered. The tier on the silver
stand is pre-marked for its frills.
The start of the 10 hour process to ruffle the entire tier.
You can see little bits scrunched up paper towel in the left picture. This holds the ruffle shape until it is “dry” enough to hold itself. I would like to note right here that
without my pasta machine this would have taken an infinite time to complete.
Thank you pasta machine. The right picture shows the smallness of each ruffle.
Oh, and this is the tier with the frills. Commonly this is
actually known as ruffles, and the pic above are scrunch ruffles. Trying to
keep it simple with ‘frills’ and ‘ruffles’.
The little indents in the fondant covered base board are
water marks. Fondant = sugar. Sugar + water = melted fondant. Board must be
recovered (neatness of board covering is a criteria for the competition).
Playing with the idea of filler flowers. These should be
called forever flowers, as they take forever. (Buds n Petals Cakes of Sydney
coined that name).
Making a backup supersize rose. Could you image if there was
only one and it broke!
So whilst it’s all white, because that’s traditional isn’t
it, we found this divine vintage-stone-lilac grosgrain ribbon to wrap the base
board.
Just a few tools used for flower making plus with a cup of
cold tea.
Setting up the cake at the Show. I think it was all
done by this stage.
Here is the finished cake! And a rare photo of Sammy
Sprinkle.
The results – overall we scored quite well and just missed
top 10 of the 37 entries in the Open Wedding cake category. The theme was not
met enough to receive more than half the marks in that section. Taken in stride
though as this is a cake I would want for my wedding over the peach and mint
green old(er) fashioned cakes our grandparents prefer.
Well, there it is! The White Texture cake in all its glory.
And we didn’t even get to talk about the three jam-packed days of the actual
show itself!
X Sammy
www.sammysprinkle.com.au
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