Montreal Cake Show!

October 22, 2013

Montreal Cake Show!

I wasn't going to make a complete post about this, I was just going to mention it and add my fave photo, but the post I wrote for last week/this week to date was already too long. And, really, the Cake Show deserves a bit more than just a line and a photo, right?!

So ever since that first week of school when we had to split up into groups for our fieldwork projects, the group I was in has more or less stuck together. And a few weeks ago, one of the girls told the rest of us about the Montreal Cake Show and that she was going and asked if we'd like to go with her - uh, yes?! So we made the arrangements, bought our tickets, found a car, and the 5 of us headed off to Vanier College this past Sunday! At the last minute one girl dropped out, so we invited another girl from the class to take her place.

We left Sherbrooke at 8am and had a lot of fun in the car listening to music, and just generally getting to know each other better. The trip went really quickly. Then we had a hard time finding exactly where we were supposed to be, but we finally did, and we were so excited!! There were people giving away Uncle Ben's rice, and there were activities for kids, and Red Path sugar was one of the sponsors, so you could win sugar by answering questions (and also thru door prizes), there were tons of vendors to buy tools and other goodies from, and there were so many beautiful cake submissions to look at! I didn't take pictures of everything, but some of the ones that appealed to me more. And then we also got to sit in on the live challenge, which was so cool! There were 3 competitors - all women - one was from Ohio, and I assume the other 2 were from Quebec, I didn't actually hear where they were from. Two of the judges were also from Quebec (jonathan Gauthier and Christian Faure), and the third was Food Network Challenge winner, and author, Lauren Kitchens. The challenge was 3 hours long, the theme was Halloween, and the cakes had to be at least 20 inches tall and be 1/3 real cake. I didn't get any pictures of the live challenge cakes, unfortunately, but one was a colourful topsy-turvy style with a bag of candy on top. The other 2 were haunted houses, but very different styles. One was more cartoon -y - it was purple with yellow and green windows/shutters, with a widow's walk around the top and little ghost everywhere. The other was more realistic and it was a whole scene. The actual house was made of gingerbread with a cake tower inside, then there was a yard in front with creepy trees and crooked fence pieces and tombstones - it was really well done! The one with the candy bag on top (my least favourite) was actually the winner. Go figure!

I bought some goodies - a fluted tart pan, some cute cookie cutters and silicone cupcake molds, and some small tools for working with fondant/almond paste - and I won a door prize (!!!) from Epicure, which was 3 dip seasonings (Cheese, Chives & Bacon; Lemon Dilly; 3 Onion) and an "Appy Maker" (apparently appies are stuffed croissants?). Fun, fun! There were lots of really interesting door prizes, I was so excited to have won one! :) Oh,- and I bought a t-shirt!

We left right after the challenge, because we had already made plans to go somewhere out of the way for supper, but we didn't want to be too late getting home. So we got our supper (very yummy ribs!), and were on the road back to Sherbrooke by 8pm. So it was a very full day, but it went by quickly. I didn't get home until 10-something, so I didn't get much sleep before school the next day. And then Monday night I had an art class to go to, so I didn't get home until 9:30, so I am really tired! Hoping to get to bed a bit earlier tonight. It's really not fun to be this tired this early in the week. :(