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In 1993, Australia-born master sugar artist Kerry Vincent -- she of the headband and infamously tart tongue as a judge on "Food Network Challenge" -- was on the cake-decorating competition circuit herself. She was "going 1,000 miles this way or that way" to showcase her skills in those days. With a husband in the oil business, the dessert-making star was tiring of the constant travel from their home in Tulsa, Okla. And so it was that she and her late colleague Maxine Boyington said to themselves, "Why don't we just hold [a show] here? Let's do it. Just two people starting off with no money and a big idea."
Today, the Oklahoma State Sugar Arts Show and Wedding Cake Competition is one of the biggest such events in the world, welcoming hundreds of blue-ribbon hopefuls and giving away tens of thousands of dollars in prizes each year. On the eve of its 18th annual staging at October's Tulsa State Fair, I spoke with Vincent about the long and winding road she took to defining the "gold standard" in cake decoration.
How did you get started in the kitchen?
I was a farmer's child. My father was a station owner; you'd call it a ranch. My mother had to make five meals a day -- breakfast, lunch, dinner, and morning and afternoon tea -- for 20 men, so she needed a little help. We just joined the workforce when we were old enough. I could milk cows, I could make butter, I could make sponges. As young as 5, I was baking cakes for shearers. It gave me a backbone. It gave me a sense of responsibility.
But Australians get the call of the wild, which means going back to England, the motherland. [As a young adult], I woke up one morning, made a decision and off I went. Forty years later, I'm still on the road. I've lived in a bunch of different countries, Holland, Mexico, Singapore, Switzerland. [Once I got married], every country that I went to, I made sure that I went to some of the leading restaurants, tried the best dishes, cooked with the best restaurants. Ex-pat women have a penchant for finding these things. And when I entertained, I'd make them. It was more or less about being a good hostess [to my husband's clients] on the diplomatic circuit. I didn't use caterers and I didn't have the chips and dips and the crudités. I always liked to do it myself, to be innovative and creative.
One day after I arrived in the States, a friend called me panicking. Her son was getting married. The daughter-in-law was a foster child, and her parents had decided not to pay for the wedding. She needed a cake, so I went to a local cake-supply shop for advice. [The owner] showed me how to pipe roses and stack the cakes because everything I'd made [so far] was single-tier. The next thing I know, I've got all these happy bridesmaids, and as one after the other fell off the perch, I finally agreed to [make another cake] and thought, "Maybe this might be an entertainment for me?" It took me about 18 months to get reasonably good, I'm not going to say great. Two years after that, I had my first cake on the cover of an international magazine.
What do you look for in a prize-winning entry?
We assume that since most of these people are professionals, they can make a good-tasting cake. This show is about decoration and design. It needs to be contemporary, not dated, or we'd be having the same cakes we had 18 years ago. And whatever's dreamed up in the imagination also needs to be technically perfect. If you did five techniques on your cake and I did 10 on mine, mine is probably going to win in a tiebreaker, but there is a crime called "overdecoratoritis." Don't chuck the kitchen sink on it. You want people to look at it and go, "I want that cake for my wedding."
It's a thrill for me that people are inventing new techniques, breaking the mold. It used to be four or five stacked tiers. Now they're spreading them out, sculpting. The fashion still dictates [vertical architecture] rather than support satellites, but your cake can be more impressive than that. It can fill up space on the table. When somebody walks in with something that just blows your mind away, there's a buzz that fills the room.
On TV, you have a reputation for being intimidating. Has that affected the contest or its entrants in any way?
If they're professionals, the first thing that they worry about is they don't want to be seen not putting up. I think Americans are sometimes too fearful of being judged. Grow some callouses on your hearts. I just look at life that way: if you're interested in something, do it now, in case you don't have the opportunity later. Who cares? It's a cake. This is not science. This is not creating a vaccine.
In some ways I'm [the contestants'] parent, and parents discipline their children. "Take me to your cake and tell me what's wrong with it." "Nothing." "Of course there is, even my cakes have something wrong with them." There's a difference vast between executed and executed cleanly. But if I see a person is trying really hard, whatever help they need, I'll be there. It's my job; it's what I love.
Zester Daily contributor Ruth Tobias is a Denver-based food and beverage writer. Since beginning her career in Boston, she has contributed to a wide range of publications, including Sommelier Journal, Mutineer, Denver Magazine, The Boston Phoenix, Zagat Survey, Culinate and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America.
Photos, from top:
Kerry Vincent. Credit: Vincent Marquetry
Cake decorated by Kerry Vincent. Credit: Kerry Vincent
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Deeba @ http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com/