Some cakes and a competition

I went along with two friends to a cake competition and exhibition at the New Dowse in Lower Hutt last weekend. I had seen this advertised along the main street of the suburb I live in, so decided to check it out.

The Wellington Regional Sugarcraft Guilds hosted this event, and if you're interested you can find out more information here. But, I thought I would try and give a quick run down.

There were lots of different categories - the ones I expected such as wedding cake, celebration cake and novelty cake; and others I wasn't expecting such as bonsai tree (I'll explain soon), miniature cake, and floral spray.

Overall, the cakes on show were not really to my taste. They were a bit, well, old fashioned. While I don't argue that an awful lot of skill and love has gone into them, they are something that I'm sure my 80-something year old Nan would appreciate but they are not very appealing to me. I took lots of photos of the cakes I really liked and will talk about a few of them here.

We got to vote for our favourite cake, and this was mine. I loved the simplicity and the colour, although I would ditch the terrible vase and flowers on top.

It was closely followed by this cake. How adorable! The figures were just so well done.

These were my favourites from the floral spray category. Although again, I'm not sure how relevant these are in 2012. But still very clever bearing mind it's pretty much all edible sugar work.

Now onto the bonsai tree. Everything but the container had to be edible, and the tree could not be deciduous, i.e. it had to have leaves. None of this bare twigs business with the excuse that it's winter! Why there is a bonsai category in a cake decorating competition I couldn't quite figure out, but they were pretty cool nevertheless. Remember, everything is edible.

In celebration of the Year of the Dragon, there was a mini cake category. I loved the scales on the first dragon.

There was another random floral arrangement category. Again, random but very well done.

Finally, I just had to share this cake. Is it a cake or is it something else? Half cake, half light show. Again, random. But a cool random. The icing was so well done. Perfectly smooth, not a hint of a crinkle, and so clean.