Summerlin 20th Birthday Cake Competition

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Shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but ELV hates cakes. Angel food cake, anniversary cakes, birthday cakes, wedding cakes, chocolate cake, sponge cake (aka genoise), …he hates them all almost as much as he hates cupcakes. There’s just something about the fluffy, generic, air-infused quality of cooked cake batter that puts him off, and reminds him of all the crappy, Betty Crocker cakes that were forced upon him as a child. Exceptions are made for cakes soaked in rhum, pound cakes and Boston cream pie (which is really two cakes separated by custard).*

The problem with cakes is usually they are about everything except good taste. And by “good taste,” we mean in both flavor and appearance. People (and by “people,” we mean the female office workers of America) are such suckers for anything crudely decorated with sugary frosting that they swoon over anything horrible or hilarious that’s put in front of them, and fail to get ELV’s legal briefs filed, or letters finished, in a timely, professional fashion. Thus does ELV have multitudinous reasons for hating cakes….all of them justified.

So deep does our loathing go, that we almost begged off judging the Summerlin 20th Birthday Cake Competition held last week at Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School. But we didn’t and we’re glad we accepted the invitation.

Because even though half the cakes were more about design than taste, all of them exhibited a serious amount of craftsmanship — especially for a bunch of amateurs. And the cakes that were about taste — like little Frejya Roark’s fluffy, coconut-ty, pineapple-y, tie-dyed homage to 60’s psychedelia — were lip-smackingly tasty indeed. Hers was moist and fresh and fun and quite a feat for a nine year old**….or any year old for that matter.

Or the Guinness cake that we could’ve drunk…er…uh…we mean eat all night long.

Even the theme-out cakes were something to behold, and we had such a good and tasty time judging the 30+ contestants we may even re-think our abhorrence of:

> Figs

> Dogs

> Dog owners

> Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News

> Fremont Street (but not East Fremont Street)

> Mini-marathons sponsored by anything

> Fake breasts

> The Dallas Cowboys

> Any walk-for-the-anything

> Arizona’s immigration policy

> Hip Hop muzak

> The ‘7o’s

> Benny Hill re-runs

> Beets

> The expensive and ineffective American health care system

We could go on and on. Suffice it to say 50 bites of 33 cakes didn’t leave us sated, but insatiably surprised at this saturnalia of Summerlin cakery. So cake-hatin’, we hereby banish thee to the dustbin of dastardly has-beens.

Here are the beeg weiners of this close competition:

Most Creative – Sin City Cake Girls

Best Representation of Summerlin – Krissy Rohr and Angie Fischer

Most Delicious – Karen Jaggi

Best kids – Frejya Roark

Best Overall – Clarie Gallagher

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* Come to think of it, we usually just eat the custard and ignore the cake.

** When ELV was 9, the most grown-up thing he did was play “Combat” with Tim Tyler, and occasionally try to persuade one of the slutty Rowe sisters to show him how their “package” differed from his.***

*** Come to think of it, some things never change.

4 thoughts on “Summerlin 20th Birthday Cake Competition

  1. Oh now I see…. back in his childhood ELV’s tastebuds were traumatized at a schoolmate’s birthday party where the cake was a storebought dry concoction with supersweet and stiff icing. Since that time ELV has felt the emotional flashback of that moment each time he was presented with a cake. Hence the resistance and oddly irrational opinion towards an innocent object such as a cake. How wonderful that he can overcome his case of Post Traumatic Stress disorder thanks to his bravery when asked to judge a cake contest. Good job ELV! It only took like 60 years or so… :)

  2. You hate cake? I’m laughing. I’m glad I didn’t know this before the competition. Thanks for being such a good sport.

  3. Thankfully you left my namesake off your list, however -I do realize it was an obvious oversight. Keep up the good work, our waistlines are all the better for your pointing out once again, if it isn’t great *cake*, why waste the calories. I’m sure you could add a haiku about let them eat cake…

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