Cake Competition... Success!

The Food Network Challenge cake competition is finally over! Yesterday was a success, if I do say so myself.  I'm very happy with the turn out of my cake... I know it wasn't something outrageous or death defying, but we had only 4 hours... 4 hours to make everything on site.  With that, comes some limitations.

Breakfast At Tiffany's

Unfortunately, we don't know our grades on the cakes, or who won.  It'll be a while until we find out.  Which is a bit annoying because we put in all that work and effort into our cakes, only to have pretty much no feedback whatsoever.  

The 4 hours pretty much flew by.  It felt like we only had 2 in total.  There was a little chaos during the whole competition, which was totally expected.  There were 21 of us in one room!  Yes, I know this sounds crazy, and it was.  Space was something that I did not have much of, which is why I am glad I didn't take on something too big.

We're being judged on 4 areas of critique:

Arbeitsweise (method of work)

Handwerklichkeit (craftsmanship)

Gestaltung (layout)

Geschmack (taste)

In the criteria of "method of work," most of that is cleanliness.  Let's just say this area of expertise is not one of my bests.  Just ask my mother.  However, I think I did a really good job of keeping my area clean during the competition.  Except for one set back...

In my cake, I had thickened cherries which I had to make first because they had to cool so that they could become part of the filling.  Before 8 o'clock... before the competition officially started, I opened the big can of cherries.  While bringing the can of cherries to scale, what do you think I do?? I spill cherry juice all down the front of my coat.  Keep in mind that I'm wearing all white.  Cherry juice?!  Why did it have to be cherry juice?  Of course it wasn't water, or something I could brush off like sugar... or basically any other ingredient in the entire bakery other than cherry juice.  So there I was before the competition, stained with cherry juice and absolutely nothing to do about it.... that's how it goes sometimes...

Here are a few other of the cakes made by some other students.  I have to say the competition was pretty great with some of these!