Friday Favorites: Fire and Ice Cake Contest

After having such a fun Saturday afternoon with the family at the Fire and Ice festival, I decided to postpone the original Friday Favorites I had typed up for today and do a quick re-cap of the Fire and Ice festival with a real focus on the cake contest.

Alec decided to enter this year at the urging of his culinary teacher and had spent a whole week working on his cake(s).  He first drew up a plan having been told that everything had to be edible on the cake. 

This was the first year the event was going to have 3 categories: Home or novice baker/ a culinary student (that was the new category for this year)/ and professional.   

Just before starting the actual cake he got an email from the event coordinator stating that this year the cakes on display did not have to be all edible due to the cost of eggs and grocery products so Alec's teacher encouraged him to use a dummy cake (basically a cake form made from Styrofoam).  While he sill had to frost and make edible decorations he now only had to make one small tasting cake made out of actual cake. 

This year's theme was "sugar and spice and everything nice" so each cake had to have some sort of spice used.  Alec decided to make a spicy hot cocoa cake using a chocolate cake base mixed with cayenne pepper.  He used cream cheese frosting for between the layers and covered the whole cake in a cinnamon buttercream topped with chocolate ganache.   He was told it didn't have to look nice and it only needed to feed 5 people... but while Alec wasn't thrilled with the look of his cake he did try to make it look nice and appetizing anyway. 

He worked hard all week and by Friday (February 10th) he had his cakes all ready for drop off.  I picked him up from school and drove like a little old lady to the church not wanting to mess up his cakes on the way there.  We were told where to set up and he set about fixing his display cake in place while I took a few photos of some of the competition (of course we had zero idea what category any of the cakes were entered in so we didn't really know which ones where HIS competition).

Now I didn't get a photo of each of the cakes that were on display (there were 48 in total being entered and at least a dozen already there when we dropped off Alec's cake), but I did try to take photos of the ones I was most drawn to.  The photos aren't fabulous as the lighting was quite dim and most of them were backlit from the window but you get the idea. 

We decided to actually go to the festival for the first time ever. I felt so bad for the ice carvers as it was a sunny warm-ish day with temps in the 40's.  While the ice sculptures didn't completely melt they lost so many of the details I know they usually  have.  

The festival ran from noon-9pm but we knew the cake winners were announced around 5:45 and Alec could pick up his cakes between 5 & 6 so we planned to get there around 3:30/4:00 and walk around, go through the church and see ALL the cakes (and vote on best in show!), and check out the other exhibits. 

As the sun started to set we were really thankful for the fire pits and heating torches. 

We waited in line a good 30 minutes or so to walk through the church and see all the cakes.  Each category gets a winner picked by the 5 professional taste testers who grade the tasting cake and the actual decorated cake as well.  Then the public all gets to vote on their favorite cake for a best in show.  

It was really crowded in the church and with all the cakes/ signs/voting bins it was hard to get photos of all the cakes I liked. Though I did snap a few more quick photos. 

This is the one that ended up winning "best in show"

All of the local restaurants and businesses are decorated and open and see an increase in sales (mostly!) for the event as well. 

We waited around until just after 5 then grabbed the cake boxes from the car and went to pick up Alec's cakes.  We waited out near the stage at 5:45 to hear the winners.... There were 10 entries into the culinary student category  and Alec's cake won for his category!

Not sure if you can really see him much over the crowd but he was called up on stage to receive a certificate and some prize money.  After that we decided to head home and warm up.  

Alec was thrilled and I spent the whole ride home texting everyone I could think of to let them know that Alec had won! 

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