See the judges, all the cake entries and the winners below! ?
The Easter Cake Contest on Saturday was MySaline’s first go at a cake baking competition, and it was a real success. The weather at the Downtown Benton Farmers Market was perfect except for a little wind, and there were 23 entries in the contest.
Our judges had their work cut out for them. Literally, because hey it was cakes and you cut them with a knife… But also figuratively, since they had to rate all those entries on looks and Easter theme, get at least one bite of each cake. Or cupcake. Or cake ball. Twenty-three bites.
I’ll show you the cakes and winners below, but first I want to give a few thank yous. Our judges were Shane Broadway of Arkansas State University, Suzanne Godbold of Three Best Bakery, and Rebecca Davis of Alice 107.7… who all likely needed a nap afterward. Thanks to you three.
Pictured left to right are judges Godbold, Broadway & Davis.
And thanks to our main sponsor West Side Pharmacy, along with the supporting sponsors who are all listed below. We couldn’t have done it without you.
And thanks to all of the contestants, some who even brought more than one entry. The cakes were amazing. The details, the decor, the textures and colors. The molding chocolate, the fondant, the— whatever it is they use to hold cakes together. It was art and I was sad to see them cut. But not that sad. I mean we wanted to eat them of course.
Thanks to Civitan Services for coming with your coffee cart and team to offer it to the crowd. Thanks to the students who came from the Benton Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council to help with getting all the cake samples to the judges. Thanks to Lindsay Jordan and Bekka Wilkerson who are both part of the MySaline team and did all kinds of magic Saturday. Our other team member Sarah Heer had another engagement but was able to make it to the contest right at the end to cheer us on.
Okay, back to the actual cakes. The judges took quite a while to get through all the tasting and discussion, with Suzanne the professional baker teaching the other two a lot of new cake vocabulary. They finally came up with these top three winners:
In 3rd place was Rosa Eason. She brought hummingbird layer cake shaped like a basket of eggs. She won a prize pack from Meditating Market in Downtown Benton.
2nd place was Natalie Woodham, with a french vanilla and strawberry tiered cake with a lifelike rabbit on the front and surrounded by daffodils on the top. She won a prize pack from Three Best Bakery.
And in 1st place, Havilah Shoptaw who won a prize pack from West Side Pharmacy with this layer cake with vibrant colors, edible grass and candy eggs.
Congratulations to all our winners. You’ll see by the gallery of the other 20 cakes below (in no particular order) that the judging was difficult.
Are you looking for local Easter events? You can find a list at www.mysaline.com/easter!