We can all breathe a sigh of relief: Shannon has finally won a competition! So, it is with great pleasure that I officially declare her Bake My Cake champ! Laura’s fondant covered tribute was runner-up in a tightly fought race for second place. Well done, my little protégé!

Congrats on your sweet victory, Shannon. Your stacked masterpiece is a wonderful celebration of everything I hate, and I thank you for baking the cake of my nightmares. Only a true friend would go to that much trouble, and I think it’s a great closer for this competition.

I’d like to send a huge thank you out to all of this year’s competitors. A lot of time and effort goes into creating cakes like the ones we’ve seen this week, and you have to be a little brave and a lot crazy to enter a competition like this. Thanks for for letting me make fun of you, for supporting my blog, and for being so awesome.

Voters, I appreciate the time you took to cast your votes in this epic buttercream battle. As always, the comments you left were better than anything I could ever write in my commentary.

And finally, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who stops by to read my ridiculous blog on the regular. My favourite thing about blogging is you, and I thank you for making this space one of my favourite places to be.

Next stop: Pumpkin Carve-Off 2014!

I’m confident that you’re gunna love these cakes as much as I do. This year’s bakers submitted entries with references to ballet, sprinkles, and my awesomeness – my favourite things – and clearly utilized search engines and facebook to research everything I like/dislike.

Cast your vote at the bottom of the post! Poll will be open until 8 am AST on Friday, May 2, 2014.

. . .

Sarah’s Cake

Sarah’s Cake was the first to hit my inbox, which means she loves me the most. Love is prompt – don’t accept anything less.

Sarah sent the following declaration of crap with her entry.

I think it might meet your requirements for your crappy cake edition:

1) assembly issues
2) fewer than 42 candles
3) tastes DIVINE!
4) just enough icing to make it luscious but some might complain it wasn’t gooped all over
5) light and airy and rich all at the same time, which reminds me of you: a delicate ballerina who eats the most sugar on the planet.

Let me begin by saying that Sarah has a blog, Sublime Delights, which I think you should visit because she a) baked me an awesome cake, and b) called me a delicate ballerina.

Now, I’m sure you’re looking at that cake and thinking: that cake isn’t crappy. I mean, look at the adorable buttercream stars and delightful polkadot candles! You might also reference points #3 and #5 (above), which don’t sound crappy at all. But I’m going suggest you take a closer look, my friends.

THAT CAKE IS OUTDOORS.

It’s not even on a table! And there’s a vase of tulips there… like a centrepiece. So, I guess Sarah would have me eat my birthday cake laying upon the turf in her yard, as she has created a lawn tabletop. Lawn tabletops are worst sort of tabletops, which is exactly why I don’t picnic. Ever. On the plus side, the cake sounds delectable, and the “table” setting is elegant. Perfect for any birthday party attended by yours truly and some tick-infested wildlife. Did you know that black bears like raspberries? Raspberries just like the ones Sarah put on top of my birthday cake? What self-respecting bear would walk away from a cake like that? None that I’ve met.

. . .

Laura’s Cake

You might remember dancing Laura from Ginger 2012. She’s graduating from my alma mater, Canada’s National Ballet School, this year. She’ll be a ballet teacher just like me! Also, she bakes. Just like me. And ten bucks says she’s wearing a lot of yoga pants these days… it’s a Single White Female kinda situation.

In the note accompanying her entry, Laura wrote:

When I first saw that you were offering the opportunity to bake an absolutely craptastic cake, a number of ideas went flying through my head. I could bake you some cake pops, tiny cakes in a jar, decorate a cake with a picture of the perfect Rutherfords and use raisins everrrrrywhere, because I know how much you truly love them.

That’s sarcasm, people. You know I hate all of those things.

Instead I made you this little number. It’s a triple layer yellow cake with a hint of lemon and large quantities of lemon buttercream (who says you can’t stick a crumbling cake back together with frosting? It just might lean precariously to one side once finished). This was my first attempt at covering a cake in fondant (it helps hide the crumbling innards) and on top is royal icing Movita, with birthday greetings that I may have smeared not once, but twice, with my own elbow.

I hope you have the happiest of birthdays! I may even do a celebratory dance with my tiresome goat in your honor…

First off, the Tiresome Goat is the best folk dance OF ALL TIME. I trust that my students will perform it (with live goats) at my memorial. Second, that cake is the Tiresome Goat of birthday confections. Perfect for a celebration of butter, sugar and a life not ended by a psychopath roommate. Look at that thing! First off, I look really good. Look how skinny my legs are! Also, my real-life body is about 60% royal icing, so Laura’s representation of me is pretty accurate. It’s as if she studied everything about me for weeks on end… What’s not to love about this cake? Lemon buttercream and three almost-structurally sound layers? Yes, please. Did Laura take the Bake My Cake logo to a whole new level of awesomeness? Hells yah, she did! Is it possible that only someone with a borderline personality disorder would go to this sort of trouble for the ballet teacher turned baker she so desperately wishes to emulate wholly and completely? Possibly.

. . .

Shannon’s Cake

Shannon sent an essay with her entry. A crap dissertation, if you will. Here are some of my favourite bits (with some editorial notes from yours truly):

I know you love buttercream, and also pistachios. You enjoy fresh salads and fresh cookies with equal vigor. But I also know what you don’t like. Welcome, then, to your birthday cake.

You once told me that you hated anything “soaked,” like bread pudding or tiramisu. I also know from experience that you dislike raisins, dates, and the like hiding in your baked goods. Simply put, you find them repulsive and may or may not barf all over anything which contained them.

Especially if the thing which contained them is bread pudding.

Your cake is what my translation of a “crappy cake” is. It is your own private hellcake. 

Is anyone else’s throat tightening? Something feels funny in my tummy…

What you see before you is a simple bread pudding, packed super tight and soaked with a massive amount of eggs and milk, with a little vanilla and cinnamon thrown in for good measure. Also, it is strewn with raisins… so, so many raisins. And they soaked in that soaky bread for a good, long time, so by the time I baked them, they were maybe three times their original size, and soft as a… well… they were soft. and moist. verrrrrrry moist.

Look at the photos of Shannon’s cake CLOSELY. Perhaps you, too, thought you were looking at some sort of Oreo-infused delight. But no. We’re looking at… I just need a moment here… swollen raisins.

After the bread pudding was baked, I cut it into three six-inch cake layers, and then i soaked those cake layers with a wee bit more milk; just in case it wasn’t moist enough. Who knew it was so easy to make bread pudding into a stable cake? I added layers of cream cheese frosting (just to give it a little more flavor and really lock that moisture in there) and then finished the whole thing off with what may be my best sprinkle design ever: Sprinkle Mountain.

Sprinkle Mountain? Guys! We’re gunna be okay! Unless…

And see that ballerina at the top? That’s you… diving right into all three layers of this cake. Immersing yourself into the soft, slightly wet, pillowy folds of bread and raisins. 

Good grief! If the geniuses at Everest College wanted to up their game, they’d drop those criminal justice courses they keep plugging on Peachtree TV and hire Shannon to develop a Cake Technology program. Structurally sound bread pudding? Held together with the carcasses of a million grapes? Genius. Also: diabolical. On the other hand, look at those sprinkles! Yes. Let’s focus on the sprinkles. Let’s sit upon a chair, gently rocking back and forth, soothing ourselves with repetitive hand motions and the thoughts of pretty, pretty sprinkles…

(If you’d like to get educated in the art of all things awesome – both with and without raisins – hang out with Shannon here. She’ll probably share the recipe for my private hellcake with you… *shudder*)

. . .

Kita’s Cake

Unlike our other competitors, Kita sent almost NO information with her cake. No essay, no points to consider, no nothing. She did mention that she hadn’t read the part about submitting crappy cakes, but who actually reads nowadays? That’s what books on tape are for. So, not to worry, Kita, I’ll send you a cassette the next time I need to ensure we’re on the same page. Besides, sprinkles make up for everything. That cake is absolutely perfect! It’s all a birthday confection should be – joyous and begging to be consumed. And it’s set against a background that looks like a sky! With a bunny! Three layers of sprinkly goodness topped with a magnificent yellow buttercream. I wanna grab one of those forks and dive right…

wait.

What’s that beside my cake? Up there… in the upper right hand corner… is that a garbage bin? Is my cake next to a rubbish receptacle? No. That can’t be garbage! Don’t be silly! That’s… what is it? Fabric? Fabric in a mesh bin? IS THAT A LAUNDRY HAMPER? Is my cake next to DIRTY LAUNDRY? What the? Who goes to all the trouble of styling the sh*t out of a cake photo – gorgeous cake stand, flowers, eggs, bunnies, painted backdrops – and then forgets to move the filthy bed sheets?

Still. Pretty cake…

(You can see more of Kita’s pretty, pretty photos over on her blog. She’s the real deal, and I’m relatively sure she does her laundry on a semi-regular basis.)

. . .

Poll will close at 8 am AST, Friday, May 2nd. Repeat voters are blocked by cookie and IP address. 

I’m turning 42 on May 2nd, and I’d like you to bake me a birthday cake. Welcome to Bake My Cake 2014: Crappy Cake Edition.

Listen, I know you like to compete. And I know you like to be judged by strangers on the interwebs. But I also know that some of you have been afraid to enter my competitions; that you feel you are not good enough. Well, sweetie, this is your year. You don’t have to be good enough. Stop reaching for the impossible, and settle for the mediocrity that is you.

Never baked a cake before? Now’s the time. Never tried rolling out fondant? You can google that. Not sure how to pipe buttercream shells, sculpt tacky toppers or build a multitiered cake? Wing it. Too cheap to buy proper decorating equipment but convinced you’ve got a great home-hack alternative? Go forth, cake pioneer! Because this year, your cakes will be grouped according to crappiness. And the crappier the better.

When you send in your Bake My Cake 2014 entries, a team of highly trained cake professionals (2.0 and I) will assess them. We will group cakes according to skill level, techniques used/attempted, mediums incorporated, overall appearance, use of theme (any theme), and overall crappiness/awesomeness. So, if your cake looks like a mother freaking savant made it, you’ll compete with other like-minded cake savants in the preliminary round. If your cake looks like it was assembled by a toothless baboon… well, we’re gunna introduce you to some new baboon friends. The final round of voting? Well, that’s a savant versus baboon free-for-all. My hands are tied.

Let’s get this sugary battle royale started:

1. Create a birthday cake for movita. Anything you like. I don’t like rules, so as long as it is a cake, I’m happy. Any style. Any colour. Any flavour. Any decorating theme.
2. Send movita a picture (two maximum) of your super-awesome cake by Monday, April 21st, 2014, 11:59 pm AST. Please don’t crash my email – downsize your photos a bit, okay? No late entries will be accepted. Photos shouldn’t include you/your kids/humans. We just wanna see your cake, Creepy. Hint: the judges really appreciate creative staging/lack lustre photography. 
3. Listen, people, I’m not kidding about the two photo thing. Send TWO photos. If you send more, I will return your email to you, tell you to pick TWO photos and demand you re-submit your entry. And don’t send me some photo you found online and then claim it as your own. Seriously. I don’t like it when my voice sounds like this.
4. Don’t worry if your cake looks like crud. This year, the cruddier the better.
5. Send your name, email, and any other information you might want included with your entry. Personal information (email, last name, weight) will not be posted. Just your first name, your photos, and the stupid stuff you tell me about your “creative process.”
6. If you’re a blogger, please send a link to your blog. Don’t assume I know who you are. I’m super dumb. Send the URL.
7. Watch for a picture of your super-awesome birthday cake to appear on movita beaucoup. I will probably make fun of your cake. Deal.
8. Watch people vote/not vote for your super-awesome cake. Voting will take place Monday, April 28 to Thursday, May 1. Winners will be officially announced on Friday, May 2nd.
9. Win the respect and admiration of many. And a prize!

Prizes have been sponsored by yours truly – because selling prescription drugs to kids in the neighbourhood has been relatively profitable. That said, I ain’t got no fancy corporate sponsors, so here are my wee offerings:

1st Place:

• a $50.00 (USD) gift certificate to spend online at Bake It Pretty
• you pick: an online Craftsy Cake Decorating class of your choice (budget: $65.00 USD) OR a $65.00 USD Amazon online gift certificate

2nd Place:

• a $25.00 (USD) gift certificate to spend online at Bake it Pretty
• you pick: an online Craftsy Cake Decorating class of your choice ( budget: $45.00 USD) OR a $45.00 USD Amazon online gift certificate

Every Other Place:

• my love and respect

So, it’s settled. Start decorating your cakes, and send me your photos. You can send me your entry this week, or slap something together at the last minute like you did in high school.

Email photo(s) of your entry to movita|at|live.ca by Monday, April 21, 2014. Too lazy to copy and paste that email address? Just click on that email button in the right sidebar of this here blog.

The competition starts… NOW!

(Tips for winning movita competitions can be found here!)

(Check out previous Bake My Cake entries here!)

Hey there, cake fans! I’m pleased to declare Mellissa (of I Breathe… I’m Hungry) the 2013 Bake My Cake champ! Congrats on your sweet victory, lady! I hope bacon appreciates all you have done in its name. Your cake is a wonderful representation of what every graduation should be: a celebration. I can’t wait to send your prize!

I’d like to send a huge thank you out to all of this year’s competitors. A lot of time and effort goes into creating cakes like the ones we’ve seen this week, and I appreciate all you have done to support my blog and annual competitions. Thanks for your creativity and enthusiasm, for letting me make fun of you, and for being so supportive of your fellow competitors. It restores my faith in the awesomeness of people. As always, the entries were incredibly varied, and I hope this never changes. Hooray for cake diversity! Some of you have competed time and time again – you know who you are. These contests simply wouldn’t be the same without you.

Voters, we appreciate the time you took to head on over here to cast your votes in this epic buttercream battle. I know the words of support you left for the competitors all over the interwebs were appreciated.

And finally, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who stops by my little corner of the internet here. So many of you have offered words of encouragement this year – it was wonderful to have you all cheering me on. I haven’t been around as much as I would have liked – baking school combined with work made for a very exhausting, albeit exhilarating, year. I haven’t properly expressed my gratitude – mostly because I haven’t had the time to sit down and absorb it all. I have appreciated each and every kind word you have sent my way. And when I walk across the stage at Convocation this afternoon, I’ll take a little part of all of you with me.

I am touched by the generosity you’ve all shown, and I am honoured to count you among my friends.

Let’s go graduate, shall we?!

It’s here. Voting day! I’d like to thank Brandi, Maggie, Eliza, Lan, Mellissa, Shannon and Katherine for making my graduation extra special. It takes baking bravery to enter a contest like this, and I appreciate the time each of you put into these absolutely amazing creations. Tomorrow – graduation day – I’ll take a little piece of each of you with me. (As in: I’m going to put cake in my pockets in case the ceremony runs long.)

People of the interwebs: have you decided? Do you know how you’re going to vote? If you need a little review, click on any of the photos to see the original post on each cake.

BRANDI’S CAKE

MAGGIE’S CAKE

ELIZA’S CAKE

LAN’S CAKE

MELLISSA’S CAKE

SHANNON’S CAKE

KATHERINE’S CAKE

As in past competitions, voters will be allowed one vote per interweb device. Yes, I get that means rich people with multiple smart phones will screw you over. But I’m going to have to ask you to get over it. Or go around your village and vote on every single computer you can find. If you find a shortcut in the voting system, have at it. All’s fair in war and buttercream!

I encourage competitors to use any means possible to win. Hand out flyers. Email yer family. Blog it, tweet it, facebook it. And tell your supporters to do the same. Remember, it’s a freakin’ popularity contest. Like college! You’re playin’ with the big kids now. Now, go forth and use the interweb the way it was meant to be used: for shameless self-promotion.

Voters, pick your favourite cake and cast your vote below!

Poll will close at 7 am AST (6 am EST) on Tuesday, June 18th, 2013. Repeat voters will be blocked by cookie and IP address. Polldaddy says this could be problematic for some voters. I’m really sorry if that is the case.