Branching out

In more competition news, I'm considering trying something completely outside the box for me. Tasting competitions! The Colorado State Fair has a few "Special" contests, including a Cupcake Challenge sponsored by C & H Sugar, a Chocolate Championship sponsored by Ghiradelli and a Great Cakes Contest sponsored by King Arthur Flour. It's definitely related to cake decorating...what's underneath the decor has to taste as good as it looks, right?

All recipes have to be original and unpublished and completely from scratch. Now, I bake from scratch all the time, and I've developed my own recipes for simple things like fillings and frostings, but never cake or cupcakes! I've been busy doing research and applying it to what I already know and yesterday made my first and second draft of my very own cupcake recipe! It does still need tweaking but I'm very pleased with both the cupcake and the icing. I had NO IDEA how fun this would be!

I have a couple of concepts in mind for the chocolate and the cake contests but I plan to perfect that cupcake before moving on to the next thing. Of course, all recipes and ideas are secret until I submit them!

Just for fun, though, here's a sneak peek at version # 2...

Thanks for reading! I'll keep you posted!

Another online contest

So, online contests being what they are, I still really don't favor them. I figure if my cakes lose something in pictures, I'm sure many others' do, too. However, all that being said, I caved, and once again entered an online contest. The theme is "Flowers, flowers, flowers" and I entered Katie's cake as it has some of my best flowers to date on it...

One of the positives about an online contest is that you don't necessarily have to make a cake; you can use one that you already have pictures of, as long as it qualifies.

The contest is hosted by an online cake decorating community. The judging is done by registered members, most of whom are cake decorators; cakes are ranked on a scale of 1 to 5. All points are tallied to determine the winner. I'll let you know how I do once the winners are announced sometime after July 5.