Cake Decorating Contest

May 11, 2012

The kids came home from school with flyers about the upcoming cake decorating contest. They had brought home several contest flyers throughout the school year (science fair, creative writing contest, find arts fair, etc.). They never said much about it, and I was too busy to take the time to enter any of those contests. However, they could not stop talking about the cakes they wanted to make for the cake decorating contest. I couldn't ignore them. They were too excited about the contest. We found some cakes that would be easy to assemble during the contest.

The rules of the contest were:
*The cake would be pre-baked and frosted with a base layer of frosting. No special pans were allowed.
*All decorations had to be edible.
*The kids had 1 hour to decorate their cakes. The cakes were to be decorated in the cafeteria.
*Parents were not allowed to coach their children during the decorating portion of the contest.

We prepared all the decorations ahead of time. I made the kids do everything themselves. Except the onions for the pizza--I cut the onions. They were too sticky for the kids to manage.

Both cakes turned out great. Especially Susie's. I don't think I could have arranged the toppings any better than she did. It looked like it was created by an adult. I guess it kind of was. I felt a bit embarrassed by how fabulous her cake turned out actually. It was obvious that I was very involved in the creation of the cake. However, she did win 1st place in the Kindergarten! And, that made her very happy. Tyler won 2nd place in the 2nd grade.

I think next year we will skip the cake decorating contest. Either that or I will have to let the kids take more charge over their cakes. Maybe we should try the science fair instead...