Merci Beaucoup's 1st Annual Holiday Cheer Cake Challenge: The Results!!

 Now we can relax!!  Here are the results from our Holiday Cheer Cake Challenge!!

Professional Division Winners

• Christmas Fondant: Jaime Williams
• Any Other Holiday Cake:  Sarah Myers
• Cupcakes:  Sweet Melissa
• Gingerbread House: Alexis Sturgeon (Mission Inn Hotel)

Novice Division Winners

• Christmas Fondant: Heather Kelley
• Christmas Buttercream: Stacey Fruchey
• Any Other Holiday Cake:  Julie Freund
• Cupcakes:  Jessica Cowley
• Gingerbread House:  Susie Gestrine
• Cake Pops:  Michelle Quinones

We've also decided to award Raquel Palacios a special "International Christmas Fondant" award for her wonderful cake that came to us all the way from Australia!!

Your Fan Favorite Winner:  Sherry Oram

Sweepstakes Winner:  Georgine Kratzer

In the Professional Division we had some good entries in both fondant and gingerbread houses!!  Sherry Oram won Fan Favorite for her beautiful ginger house and Alexis Sturgeon sent in three impressive houses including our winner, a replica of the Mission Inn that featured great detail and an intricate construction process.

In the fondant cakes we debated having 1st thru 3rd place awards because they were all so nice.  Tina's ribbon inspired tree and Erica Heery's cute mug of hot cocoa and gingerbread men made us smile, but in the end we handed over 1st to Jaime Williams for a full bodied elf that was clean and showed off a number of techniques.  Why do you guys make this so hard on us?

Things only got harder in the Novice Division where the fondant debate raged into Sunday morning!  The result?  We decided to have both a domestic and international winner!!  From Australia, we just adored the work of Raquel Palacios.  The figures were terrific and the ruffled edges were perfect.  Very well done.  Stateside it was the composition and execution of Heather Kelley's snowglobe and penguin cake that we just kept coming back to.  It tells a fun story and is just brimming with the spirit and fun of the holiday season.  

That being said, major props have to go out to Ainsley Stephens for two awesome cakes, a Peanuts theme and a Christmas dog in a box that were adorable and very, very well done.  We loved Colleen Ray's fondant tree (our first entry) and Nichole Ferello's Rudolph.  Marianne Reitsma, what can we say about your nutcracker?  Amazing.  Everyone did such fun and wonderful cakes and after a slow start to the entries coming in, we were blown away by all of your participation!  Picking a winner is not rocket science and without sounding too cliched I hope, you are all winners to us;) 

Julie Freund's "Any Other" winner was a great example of how to work black and white design into a cake!

And Michelle Quinones' cake pops get the unofficial "made Reva giggle" award along with her 1st place;)

Next year, we hope this will be bigger and better and of course, I'm looking for some Hanukkah cakes.  Seriously, where my kosher cakers at? LOL!  Congrats to literally everyone.  We know it can be scary to submit your work into contests, but we loved each and every one and appreciate the time you took to join in.  We have a full slate of contests in 2012 including more Halloween and Holidays as well as a birthday cake challenge in April and a big wedding cake showdown in August!!  This is just too much fun not to keep doing!!  

One last note, I wanted to give a special shout out to Alex Kleidon who, after seeing us mention the mini series "Hogfather," rented the movie and then proceeded to make us a "Hogswatch" cake for the any other category!!!  There were many high fives and fist pumps when it came in Alex, thank you for stepping outside the box and taking a chance on something new!!  

So from the the Merci Crew and the Hogfather, we hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday Season and here's to a fantastic 2012 full of cakes and laughter!!

Comments

[Tina Gdovic]

Congrats to all the entrants! There was some great talent this time around! Thanks for having the contest, guys!!!

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These 'cheer cakes' are truly exceptional so everyone deserves a recognition and a big round of applause.

[Georgine Kratzer]

I see I won the sweepstakes, although no one told me and I have no idea what I won....would love to know :)
Georgine Kratzer

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