Not only did I enter the Decorative Exhibit competition at Cake International but I also pushed myself forward to enter the LIVE!!! Cake Decorator of the Year competition on the Sunday as well! The cake I planned to recreate is my now infamous Fisher Price phone cake as seen above.

Unfortunately Lady Luck (or should that be Lasura – check out my name badge it was my new name for the day haha) was not on my side and I literally lost a grip on time. To start with I was one of only 3 people using actual cake and the only one carving and modelling the entire cake on site in the time frame of the competition. I knew this would get me more marks for showmanship of skill and carving is a strong point of mine; I know i can carve and cover and decorate a cake in that time frame BUT it leaves NO time to allow for mistakes!

Then sadly the first mishap happened – the sugarpaste I was using was dry and awful causing a few cracks which I had to spend more time ironing out. This was swiftly followed by the board I was covering being too soft to place my raised cake board on, so the icing gave way underneath causing the cake to tip back I had to take the cake off and cut some icing away off the board. By this point panic was beginning to set in – it was only looking over and seeing my awesome friends, my husband and lovely kids that kept me going. There were so many times I was thinking to myself “Can I just walk off now?!”
Then the coloured panel under the cake tore when I peeled it away from the backing paper so I had to repaint the whole thing. Of course all of these factors led to me completley flapping in the last 30 mins – I was panicking and stressing and saw the entire competition hopes just go flying out of my grasp! The Rice Krispie Treat receiver was awful too – i would normally adhere 2 coats of sugarpaste to a piece as big as that to stop te bumps and also to make the receiver wider for the finished cake BUT by then there was no time and also no time to do the painting on the sides of the piece or the phone wire or even to paint the face on properly.

It was awful – I was pretty embarrassed to have my piece up there with all of these people looking at me and it in pity (that’s how I took it anyway lol). It was absolutely NOWHERE near my standard and I was so peeved that everything had gone against me on the day. I think the funniest part was definitely my panic clean up method!!! I had 30 seconds to spare and so just lifted the bin up to the side of the table and swept EVERYTHING minus the cake into it hahaa – true panic mode and I think my family would agree true Laura style

I was delighted for the bronze, silver and gold winners – they did a great job and were much better prepared for time should they have encountered any mishaps along the way (which I don’t believe they did). If I had taken my cake ready carved and my RKTs already formed then I know I would have produced an AWESOME finished piece. That is what I am most upset about, I’ll never know if it would have been enough to be placed or not now but I am sure there would have been a much better chance of it had it at least have been finished. Not only that but I would have been proud of my finished piece and the audience would have been able to see how much better my work is than what they were presented with yesterday.
I am proud of what I achieved in the time limit given because there was a heck of a LOT of work there but I challenged myself to go all out and show them every skill I have and sadly that choice backfired!!

The judges said to me afterwards I did show great skill with my carving and modelling and had that have been hand in hand with a fabulous finished piece at the end of it then that would have been great BUT it wasn’t and they could award me highly for the skills shown but not for the finished piece.

So a fun, exciting, adrenalin filled 3 hours was had by me, and I think I certainly had the best cheer squad of the whole competition (I should have had credit for that hehe) and as crazy as it seems I am DEFINITELY entering again next year – I have a point to prove about my standard of work and now I know I can take precarved forms and not worry about the loss of marks then that’s what I intend to do. I think I am already addicted to this sort of competition – so bring it on

Photo of the winning cake by Laura George….