Inspirations in Wonderland

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of activity and most definitely busy! A few months ago Icing Inspirations announced they would be moving to a new location and as part of their grand re-opening celebration they held their first ever cake competition today. Courtney Clark and Kendon Smith of Cake Nouveau (and past participants on the Food Network and TLC cake challenges) were also brought in as guest judges for this event.

The theme for the competition was Inspirations in Wonderland based on the popular Alice in Wonderland story with the only stipulation being that pink and green be used somewhere in the design. I love anything enchanting and whimsical so I didn't waste any time sketching out my cake as soon as the rules were announced. WELL time got away from me and all of a sudden it was two days before the delivery deadline and I had yet to start! NOT GOOD.

At this point I had two choices: (1) withdraw from the competition fully knowing that I wouldn't have enough time to finish the original concept OR (2) change the concept all together. I chose the latter because when you say you're going to do something, you should. Especially knowing all the work that Chrissie put into organizing this event.

So with only a day to spare I went back to the drawing board. Twelve straight hours later, a few extra hours on the day of delivery, and many moments of nearly caving to the pressure yielded this.

Where a lot of entries focused on the literal story, I chose to take elements of it and symbolically display them in a clean and simple whimsical design. It may not be Alice in Wonderland the way it's known, but it was inspired by Wonderland. And after all was said and done I was quite happy with how it turned out aside from the competition.

After seeing some of the other fantastic cakes displayed I really wasn't too hopeful going into this - thinking that I had diverted too far from the original theme. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that this cake won Honourable Mention in the Professional Division (next after 3rd place). And I'm totally happy with that!

Did I learn anything from this experience? I sure did. That I'll be working on my next competition cake at least a month in advance!!