The Mad Hatter, Mulan, The Little Mermaid, and their creators, were the three winners at Central Texas College’s recent cake competition judged by Food Network star and Harker Heights bakery owner Lily Halabi and others.
As their final exam, ten CTC Cake Decorating II students presented their culinary creations for judges, staff and students to taste in the Student Center Wednesday. Students were given the freedom to design the cake of their dreams as long as it was Disney-themed.
CTC Hospitality Department Coordinator and Cake Decorating Professor Lupita Bluhm said the main goal of the semester was to teach her students how to build non-traditional cakes using various materials to support unique structures.
“Here at the school we work more with PVC pipes to hold the weight,” Bluhm said. “Imagine all the weight that they have to hold so the cakes don’t fall.”
Aspiring baker, CTC student Ana Rodriguez took home “Best in Show” for her elaborate, original, edible work of art, “The Mad Hatter,” which included Alice in her trademark blue dress and white tights going down a rabbit hole, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the famous blue caterpillar, and a secret staircase crawling up the back of the Mad Hatter.
Rodriguez said the cake took her 352 hours to design and create.
“The top cake is made out of vanilla, strawberry filling, bourbon syrup, and then covered with chocolate ganache,” Rodriguez explained.
Crystal Kniffin won “Best Flavor” for her “My Little Mermaid” cake, while Lan Griffin took home the “People’s Choice” award for her cake inspired by the late-90s Disney-hit “Mulan.”
“Being Asian, Chinese, I like Mulan - Mulan’s my favorite,” Griffin said revealing a Mulan T-shirt under her CTC chef jacket. “So, I decided to do Mulan.”
Initially, Griffin said she wanted to do a four-tiered cake with an intricate Mulan-themed design, but after a good night’s sleep she felt inspired to go in a different direction.
“I had a vision and so I said, ‘Chef, I need to change it,’ because we learned all this structure building, so I decided to do a horse with Mulan, and her horse, and a Cherry Blossom tree,” Griffin said.
Griffin’s final exam featured Mulan riding her horse, who appeared mid-gallop, with supporting characters Mushu and Cri-kee the cricket watching on. The cake itself was vanilla bean passion fruit flavored with buttercream icing and filling.
“I like to do different flavors,” she said. “I don’t stick to the basic. There’s nothing wrong with the basic — it’s just my extra-ness.”
The culinary student said she hopes to graduate CTC’s culinary arts program in 2022.
“By the time I graduate, I’ll probably be 50,” she said. “I’m 49 now. I tell people, ‘You’re never too old to go back to school.’ I was so scared two years ago when I first started. My husband said, ‘You got it. Just go do what you love,’ and this is what I love — cooking and baking.”
Halabi, owner of Lily’s Cakes in Harker Heights, and Katherine Alvarez, owner of Kitty’s Kakery in Killeen, were on hand to sample the students’ cakes and judge the contest Wednesday.
Bluhm said she was extremely proud of all of her students this semester.
“Usually at the bakeries, the cake shops, when they’re going to do a cake of this magnitude, they have two to three people working on the cake,” she said. “Here at the school, all of them do everything by themselves.”
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December 11, 2021 at 09:00PM
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Central Texas College students compete in cake contest - The Killeen Daily Herald
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