It started leading up to my husband’s birthday party, which was on Friday.  I don’t do licensed characters for order (no, I don’t make exceptions!), but he is SUCH a huge Simpson’s fan, there was nothing that would fit him better as a cake. I LOVE how it turned out! Homer Simpson, in his underwear, asleep and drooling on the couch! Shame we had to serve it.. more about that later. In the meantime, you can check out a photo of it in the “Other Cakes” section of our gallery.

Saturday started early - it was the weekend of the Upper Midwest Bakery Association’s convention. Whoops, there goes my weekend off. I had initially intended to enter 3 cake competitions - 1 live, 2 dummy cakes - but life has just been too crazy to get around to it lately. I did enter the Baked Foods category, submitting my Mocha Nanaimo Bars to be judged by my peers! I’d never entered anything baking related before, for ANYTHING, so I was pretty nervous!

After dropping off my entry, I met my friend Thea, of Perfect Day Cakes (www.perfectdaycakes.com) out of Owatonna. Man, it’s been since - what, November? - since I’ve seen her! After meeting up, we had to wait to meet up with a friend of hers, before we’d hit the seminar circuit.

I’ll admit - sometimes I get weird ideas from NOWHERE, and they turn out to be really silly. I had known OF her friend from the online cake scene. I’d seen her work / name around, but never really talked to her or anything. I have a LOT of cake “groupies” who add me to their myspaces and stuff, but I don’t really seek out others, if that makes sense. I also had some idea of her being a crotchety old lady (?), but I don’t know where I got that from. I digress. Imagine my shock when this spunky Asian chick comes bouncing over. My age! I don’t think she could have been more different from my “little old granny” image if she tried!

I just realized that this is going to be a loooong blog entry. If you’re actually interested in reading about the debauchery of the weekend, maybe go get a snack or a drink now? LOL.

Anyway, Maryann is a *Seasoned* competitor. Food Network, Oklahoma, the whole shebang. I had NO idea! She’s also pretty much my evil twin. (Given that she’s also Thea’s evil twin.. what is Thea to me, and vice versa? LOL). I could see that the weekend would be a lot of fun!

After introductions were made, we checked out the cake Maryann had entered (a SUPER cool 3D “Ginger” Chicken Run cake!), then we went to our first seminar. We bowed out a few minutes later and.. went out. For hours. It was a lovely spring afternoon in downtown St Paul, and we didn’t end up spending a minute more of it in seminars at all that day!  Tons of fun anyway, but I guess “What happens in St Paul STAYS in St Paul”.

We meandered back to the hotel in time for the pre-banquet cocktail party, but just sat down and gabbed. I am SO happy that there are some really cool cake people locally.  You always hear of bitter rivalries among competing businesses, but I’ve been really lucky to make friends with a lot of the people I “compete” against. Good to be able to honestly refer people when I’m booked solid for a particular day, too!

I was a nervous wreck. That puts it mildly, but hey.. this is getting long and I’m not even at the end of Saturday night yet!  There’s always Sunday coming!

Anyway, we all enjoyed a yummy reception dinner, and sat through speaches to wait for the award presentations.  While Mrs Kickass Competitior Maryann was all calm, cool, and collected.. my hands were vibrating! I was shaking hard enough that I felt pretty silly, yet I couldn’t control it. Like I said.. first competition!

When they called my name out as a gold medal winner, I just could died. I know I squeeked out come exclamation of complete shock, and stumbled my way to the front. Though comments had not been made about anyone - just names announced - the announced actually added something to the effect of “If you haven’t had a chance, you need to go try those bars! They were REALLY good!” after my name!!!  I know I told the guy next to me on stage “this is my first competition!!!”, and I know I probably looked like a total Noob.  Oh lord. LOL. Whatever, I am now an award winning baker! (I did confirm the “you need to try these…” comment with everyone at my table, I didn’t imagine it!!)

On the way home that night, two things hit me.  You may have noticed the “best of…” type listings of vendors. Whether it’s The Knot or the local wedding mags.. I have some serious doubts that I’ll ever win those. It’s not that I don’t think I’m one of the best cakers locally - I *know* I am.. it’s just that the contests are all set up as votes, and that stacks the deck in favor of those who have the set up for VOLUME. One frequent winner puts out dozens of wedding cakes every weekend - I’ll do 3 at an absolute max.  I’m not interested in freezing cakes, hiring a bunch of staff, or speeding myself up.. I LIKE being a boutiquey caker.. it just sometimes sucks to not be able to have those particular awards behind me, you know?

That’s what’s so great about this. This contest wasn’t about volume, or a popularity contest (names were not on the entries, just numbers).. nor was it judged my laymen. This was purely a quality thing, judged by my peers - professional bakers. That fact is a serious thrill for me!

The other thing is… I just entered that exact recipe in the Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown. I won’t know till June if I’m a finalist or not, but having pros judge it as gold medal worthy sure was a boost of hope! $25,000 sure would go a long way to opening a full retail sweets shop!

I got home, found that hubby and son had NOT turned the house into “Lord of The Flies” (Always a good thing!), and went straight to bed - had to be up at 5am on Sunday morning!

Sunday was a combo of Bakery convention AND a bridal show a local floral wholesaler was putting on - they were expecting 300-400 local florists, and had invited a small handful of cake people to have exhibits.  Thea was going, so I knew it would be fun!  We ended up meeting Penny from Steele Custom Cakes, who was all kinds of awesome.

I just realized that a lot of what happened on Sunday is huge news, but not quite for public announcement yet. I’m gonna truncate this post! Sunday was a ton of fun, and we have a bunch of HUGE news coming down the pipe in the next 6 months or so! Stay tuned!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Commentary, Vendors, News & Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.