ICCA Cake Competition

For those who did not manage to view the exhibits; what a waste.. I have downloaded some of the pictures here for all to share..... pls go to the photo gallery page. Congratulations to my new found friend, Shahril for his most deserving win.

I did join the competition at the persistance of my supportive husband..

His design was an engineering feat in itself....

He wanted me to do floating collars ... yes floating... that means two or more collars supported only by extension work...... challenging indeed but it was very tempting for me to live up to his challenge... and so I agreed to his design...

BUT I forgot all about the date of the competition and made a committment to take up a teaching position  -- I agreed to start on the 20th September.....

Again Vivian from ICCA called me and reminded me about the competition.... she had even helped me to register for the competition.... BLESS you girl...

When I heard that the date was on the 1st of October ; I screamed.... I had less than 2 weeks and the design Mr Hubby was talking about was still in his head....

I went back to the school management and asked if I could join them two weeks later... the answer was no.... they had been waiting for me for more than a month already.... and so the battle begins...

Daytime teaching and night time preparing the competition cake.....

One consolation.... I did not enter the competition to win... just for the stress, sleepless nights, the frustrations, the worries.... all these are invaluable experiences. Believe you me, you got to try it to understand what I mean...

I am one person who is aware of my limitations.... what am I compared to the big guns like Shahril, Man Kwan, Kelvin Chua, Mama Min........ but I did it for two people.... HUBBY and ME....

And so the burning of the midnight oil started..... every night, we would make collars after collars of royal icing - they were big ones ---- 16" by 16" ..... then the embroidery pieces.....

My 2 sons received lessons on the spot; literally overnight they learnt how to make and knead fondant and royal icing ......

But rushed as we did, the collars did not have time to dry..... to cut a long story short, the big collars all broke --- all 6 of them. And so the bottom tiers had no collars .... we had to think of a new design fast  and that was already 3 o'clock in the morning... our minds went blank....

The smaller ones --- with the big piped lace work ... were fine.

I started 'floating' them at six o'clock the same morning of the competion..... as I was piping the extension work; I noticed one string that was not so straight..... I broke it with a pincer and as my luck would have it, it fell under the lace piece.. Against my hubby's advice, I did the UNTHINKABLE... I manouvered a pair of pincers under the lace and attempted to pick up the broken piece of royal icing..; got it in mo pincer but as

 I was pulling it from under the collar, my wrist knocked against the collar and a cracking sound was heard.... and thus the sinking of the lace collar piece began.... I deserved the stern glare I got from Mr HUBBY.... I felt like crying but it would have been no use... and there was not enough time for me to start 'floating' another collar.

And thus, my cake turned out very different from what we had planned.... but as I said... an invaluable lesson learnt indeed.... Eddie Spence and Rosalind (ICCA) -- 2 of the judges-- gave many pointers on how I could have improved my cake and Eddie shared on how I can guarantee my royal icing collars would not break.... those advice was worth each drop of sweat and stress we went through to get the cake done.....

Please feel free to comment and provide pointers.....