Professional Competition: Cakes

​Vote for your favorite cake! Select here to see all entries or select the name of the registrant to go directly to their creation. 

Ann Marie Hartley, #101, Sifted Savannah Bakery 

The bottom tier is bas relief and I added some gold luster dust for an antique look. The top tier is marbled fondant with gold accents on some of the marble. The sails on the top of the cake are rice paper sails accented with gold luster dust.

Christine Leaming, #105, Sweet Geeky Cakes 

Erin Bailey, #102, The Cake Alchemist

This cake is lucky charms flavored​, filled and topped with a lucky charms swiss merengue buttercream. There are modeling chocolate noodles, with chocolate/marshmallow/rice krispy meatballs. The sauce is a raspberry sauce and cake crumbs. The garlic bread is painted on cake and torched. I also used white chocolate for cheese and torched it for a melted look. The seasoning is painted wafer paper. The bowl and fork are just props and are not edible. 

Mary Goldman, #103

Sara Enos, #104, Figment Cake Design

Martina Oravcova, #106

I'm a hobby baker and my cake is inspired by a visit of Florida swamps last summer. The cake is covered in fondant and water lily flowers and the dragonfly are also made out of fondant. The wings of the dragonfly are made out of gelatin. Frog is partly 2D painted on the cake transitioning to 3D frog out of modeling chocolate.

Keaton Brock, #107, Cakes by Keats

See the world with this chocolate olive oil cake with almond buttercream! Decor is almond buttercream, including the clouds surrounding the bottom, with some sprinkles. All the pinpoints are the locations traveled to in the book "Around the World in 80 Days". ​

Emerlie Miller, #108, My Sugar Rush

Jimbo the curious little octopus! This gravity defying cake shows a bright watercolor octopus washing up on shore to peek inside a ship stuck in a bottle. You can see the pirate ship splashing about in chaos, as the bottle is being held up by a stream of isomalt water. In his other hand, Jimbo's tentacle is wrapped around a realistic cork. And the bottle's neck has hanging string and a broken wax seal that was destroyed when the bottle was opened. The mini pirate ship is made of shaped fondant, wafer paper sails, and shaded with petal dust. Built and then fully assembled inside the fragile bottle. The hollow isomalt bottle and all water elements are made entirely out of isomalt, with foam made from white velvet cocoa spray and white gel color. Eyeballs are hardened black fondant pupils and isomalt. Edible sparkling sand is made using crushed graham cracker mixed with metallic sanding sugar, disco dust, nonpareils, and rock candy pieces. Internal structuring of the octopus tentacles is made using copper piping and a threaded rod, covered in rice cereal treat and modeling chocolate. Hand painted with layers of petal dust mixed with alcohol to create a watercolor effect.

Kira Martinez, #109

I went with the dia de los muertos these. The cake is fondant and I used cake paint on the bottom for the sky and I cut out the building on the bottom and used an edible pen on the banner's detail. I used molds for the skulls. I used coco painting on them and made flowers with fondant and hand piped on the hat on the top level. 

Shani Christenson, #110, Shani's Sweet Creations

Sea Unicorn: Gravity defying, 3d sculpted cake

Techniques: gravity defying structure, 3d cake sculpting, airbrushing, isomalt casting (coral base, eyes, sprinkle filled unicorn horn), wafer paper (spines, fin & seaweed),  gelatin bubbles, cake marbling (colored to look like an abalone shell)

Maria Marusich, #111

Vanilla cake, vanilla bc, fondant with fresh flowers

Ray Vizcaino, #112, Sugar and Scribe Bakery

Elsa Cake. She is made with modeling chocolate, cake and rice cereal treats. All materials are edible :) 

Heather Walker, #113, Cake Doll

I'm so excited about this competition!  My niece lives in Temecula and suffers from Juvenile Myositis.  She was also born a bit prematurely in 2010 and the Ronald McDonald House has ALWAYS been SO generous and kind to my brother and his family!  

I'm submitting a cake for the adult professional category of the competition that I made a couple of weeks ago.  The cake is actually a rendition of HER, telling everyone to STAY HOME and STAY CALM, even if you feel like you're growing ROOTS you've been home for so long!   We called the cake GNOME-A-STAY-AT-HOME.  

Suzanne Foster, #114

The bottom tier of the cake was made with over 300 hand-rolled fondant circles to create the flower effect. For the next tier, I made almost 300 tiny flowers for the quilted patter. The next tier was done with imprinting and painting gold. The 4th tier was embossed and hand painted. My favorite part is the hand made cage and hand made sugar flower topper! 

Tlicious Designs, #115

Butterflies are such a great reminder of what can emerge from a period of cocooning. Techniques used: pulled and poured isomalt, fondant cutouts and collaring, and fondant and royal icing mosaic on cake board. 

Mandy Sookdeo, #116

Gluten-free Chocolate Dachshund cake

Victoria White, #117

Beth Meyer, #118

Octopus sculpted cake

Beth Meyer, #119

Garden statue bust sculpted cake

Beth Meyer, #120

Around the World in 80 Days Pilot sculpted cake

Beth Meyer, #121

Racing Helmet sculpted cake

Beth Meyer, #122

Biker Dude sculpted cake

Amy Winfrey, #123

This is my recreation of the classic 1954 Tintin cover "Explorers on the Moon". The cake is a Hummingbird cake with cream cheese frosting, the rocket is rice krispies treats covered in fondant, and Snowy is fondant with a gelatin space helmet and spaghetti antenna. 

Andrea Whitecotton, #124

This is a two tiered cake iced in white buttercream decorated with a black cake lace and finished with fresh maroon colored carnations.

Jessie Anne Reilly, #125

The peacock is blown sugar , body. Wings pulled sugar. Then hand painted and air brush. The jewelry is casted sugar with gold fleck. Then beading painted with gold.Beading is chocolate clay. Feathers are gumpaste and fondant the hand painted . The cover on the cake is buttercream with fondant covering, the piping is buttercream and royal icing. The border is fondant then painted with eatable gold. The cupcake feather are the same as on the bird.

Lisa Altfest, #126

My cake's theme is obviously Tiger King haha! Joe Exotic and his tiger are made of fondant, gum paste and modeling chocolate and the decorations on the tiers are all land made from modeling chocolate. I used a technique used in polymer clay making called canes to make the individual animal print circles.

Blair Braz, #127

For this cake, I decided to make a marbled/watercolour buttercream bottom tier. This is to signify the strength we as people have and to represent how intertwined and dependent on one another we are. The world map was stencilled on with buttercream to represent the quote “we’re all in this together”, which I feel is extremely fitting given the current world situation. Finally, for the top tier I piped buttercream flowers to represent hope for the future as a healthy world. The cake is decorated in vanilla buttercream.

Chrissy Meisner, #128, Bloomer Bakery

Maria Ting, #129

Nicole Bias, #130

The cake is chocolate all decorated with fondant and a gravity defying technique that I've always wanted to try. All details are hand molded and hand painted/dry dusted. My family is quite excited they actually get to eat something I made!

Nancy Linstead, #131

Emma Stewart, #132, Emma Stewart Cake Design

Becky Anderson, #133

I am a self taught baker. I made this Native American cake. It carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Everything is edible except a dowel glued with chocolate to support the fondant disc. The face I did with edible dusts. Everything is handmade.

Thelma Christine Hernandez, #134, Layered

In keeping with the San Diego Cake Club’s original theme, “Around the World in 80 Cakes”, and inspired by the 1956 movie, “Around the World in 80 Days”, I excitedly designed this cake. BOTTOM TIER: this tier was inspired by the baskets used for hot air balloons. The technique I used for this is latticework panels. Six panels were created out of royal icing, allowed to dry overnight, painted each cake side using gold highlighter, attached each panel to each cake side once dry, and secured the panels using piped royal icing shell and zigzag borders. Over 350 small roses were made and individually dusted in gold highlighter for a decorative touch. SECOND TIER: the technique used to create this tier is bas-relief. The flowers used to create this tier are the national flowers for each intended place of travel in Mr. Fogg and his assistant, Passepartout, original itinerary: London = rose; Egypt and India = Lotus; Hong Kong = orchid; Japan = cherry blossom; U.S. = rose. THIRD TIER: the technique used to create this tier is hand painting. The first image was inspired by the original book cover for Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne; the rest were inspired by scenes from the movie or other book covers. I covered the cake with a white fondant and used a very light marbling technique. FOURTH TIER: this tier was inspired by an image in the San Diego Cake Show Facebook page and a perfect fit given the theme. I used the silhouette technique to create this tier and outlined the silhouette using gold highlighter. The Big Ben clocktower, located in London where Mr. Fogg and Passepartout’s journey begins and ends, has its hands pointed at the time in which Mr. Fogg and Passepartout were due to return to London (8:45 p.m.) if they were to win the wager. Lastly, I painted the Statue of Liberty entirely in gold because she represents the U.S. The tier was then finalized with royal icing buttercream piping mimicking the movement of wind and clouds. TOPPER: the hot air balloon was hand sculpted and used by Mr. Fogg and his assistant, Passepartout, to fly to France, but accidentally landed in Spain. The elephant was used as a mode of transportation while in India. I created a silicone mold out of an elephant I have at home, made the elephant using isomalt, then dusted it with gold highlighter. The cake stands over three feet tall! It was both fun and challenging to design and create this cake, but I couldn’t be prouder. I look forward to next year’s competition. Good luck to everyone!

Cláudia Oliveira, #135

Wedding Cake decorated with royal icing and hand painting flower!

Zachary Olbrych, #136

Saloni Salvi, #137

Free hand painted including eyes, aligator skin and cake board. No air brush. Fully made out of cake (no rice crispies).

Saloni Salvi, #138

Made with hand made sparkling sugar and sugar flowers. All scrolls are also handmade. No molds.