Fancy Cakes by Lauren Blog: July 2009

The begining of the day was wonderful. Here I am next to my Elmo armature getting ready to make the cutest cake I've ever made. My assistant, Heather, and I had all the kinks worked out during practice and nothing stood in our way of having a great day at Challenge...

...Until thirty minutes after the clock started, Heather severely burned her hand with sugar that was heated to 340 degrees. Our judge, Kerry Vincent, was the first one to come to our rescue. While the producers were bringing us bandages and burn ointment and calling the peremedics, Kerry and I were wrapping Heather's hand. I thought for sure that our day was over.

I don't know how she did it, but Heather kept working! I thought I could just get the muppets finished and submit them for judging. Heather was responsible for the two large cakes in our peice. I never imagined that she would be able to continue such a huge job with that hand in such pain. There was no stopping her.

My character was Elmo and I designed the cake as a Sesame Street parody of Food Network Challenge. Sesame Street has always used parodies on their show to entertain parents and older siblings. It's a great idea and I thought I would pull this parody idea into my cake.

Elmo is the star of my parody cake, as he has just been named the winner of the Monster Network Challenge. He is standing on top of the judges table holding his winning cake in the air. His assistant, Goldfish Dorothy, has her gold medal around her fish bowl. The host of the show, Cake'in Gerhard (Keegan Gerhard), holds Elmo's medal in his hand. The two judges, Cookie Vincent (Kerry Vincent) and Patrick Cakestand (Partick Coston), look on with excitement.

Here you see me talking to the third judge, Carol-Lynn Parente, executive producer of Sesame Street. At that point, she was sold on my idea.

The whole set is very calm and quite all day.

I made Elmo out of rice cereal treats and red modeling chocolate. The fur was modeling chocolate that I pulled through a pasta attatchement on the Kitchen Aid mixer. I think Elmo took me two hours to finish. We were so behind with Heather's burn.

There's Patrick looking over our judges' table cake. I try hard to read him when he comes around my kitchen.

Keegan is looking at the cake after I got Elmo and Cookie on. He gave me a big smile!

I'm starting to work on my third muppet, Patrick Cakestand. For some reason I was able to finish him in half the time which gave me some time to help Heather catch up.

The finishing touch on Patrick was his uni-brow. The real Patrick hated this, but I told him that I gave him the uni-brow because his eye brows are the only hair he has on his shaved head. Plus, the uni-brow is a classic muppet feature.

On to my fourth and final muppet, Cake'in Gerhard.

The chef's coats were made from a wonderful and unusual sugar product called Sugar Veil. It is pure white and very shiney. I was able to cut the pieces from large sheets that I had made.

Heather and her burned hand....Still working with a smile!

With thrity minutes left, all four muppets are up and ready. Now it's time for Elmo's cake and poured sugar fish bowl (the cause of Heather's burn).

Rush, rush, rush.... Getting little details finished as best we can.

I had to climb a ladder to get Elmo's cake up. The entire cake stood almost 5-feet tall.

Here's the winning cake. Mike McCarey's Big Bird. It was incredible. I've never seen a cake that perfect in person. He deserved his win!

Mariane Carroll's Cookie Monster cake. So cute! I loved the chef's hat and the smiling stick of butter.

Roland Winbeckler's Oscar The Grouch cake. It was great. The sugar "trash" he made at the bottom of the cake was fantastic!

So, by now you know that we didn't win. But we got the silver medal. We were both so proud to have finished the cake, especially under those circumstances.