If you’re a cake decorator who doesn’t have cable or satellite television, there is a very good reason to bring it into your home: the Food Network.

Here you will see incredibly beautiful and outrageous cakes, entertaining and highly skilled cake designers, fun cake competitions, and on their Website, recipes from the competitions (so you can make some of these delectable cakes in your own kitchen).

An American cable network, the Food Network is viewed in 80 million households by half a million people per day. From year to year, the Food Network gains subscribers faster than any other ad-supported cable network.

It airs in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Monaco, Andorra, France, the French-speaking territories in the Caribbean and Polynesia, and Canadians have their own version, Food Network Canada.

 

The Food Network Challenge, which hosts the largest food competitions in the world, is so popular it has achieved franchise status. Here are a few examples of the competitions that appeal to cake decorators:

Wedding Cake Challenge – Teams vie for the $10,000 prize. The challenge? Create the world’s most spectacular wedding cake! Often the processes can be just as exciting as the final products. For example, Homaro Cantu’s cake decorating kit includes a Class IV laser that sears edibles at 2,800 degrees F.

Disney Dream Desserts – Student pastry chefs compete at the Happiest Place on Earth for a $14,000 scholarship and an internship in the Disney kitchens.

Mystery Birthday Cake – Five of the nation’s top cake designers must please a demanding client. They enter the competition not knowing the client’s identity or criteria. These are divulged only minutes before the clock begins.

Birthday Cake Competition – Prepare to be amazed. Outrageous cakes in this competition have included an edible, rotating Ferris wheel.

Not all of the competitions in the Food Network Challenge involve sugar, but many do, including Wedding Cake Classic, Fire and Ice (pastry and ice sculpture), Cookies, and Ultimate Wedding Cakes. Other challenges feature everything from cocktails to tailgate party foods.

With programs like this and given our inherent love of good food and entertainment, it’s no wonder the Food Network, created in 1993, is setting new viewing records in primetime, has a large daytime fan base, and enjoys bragging rights to one of the most popular food sites on the Web.

Celebrity chefs, including Wolfgang Puck and Emeril add to the entertaining/education recipe for success.

And under the spotlight of the Food Network, some of its personalities are now famous, including of course, the Network’s star, Rachael Ray of 30-Minute Meals.

Then there’s the host of the Food Network’s latest creation (as of January, 2007), Ace of Cakes, Duff Goldman who brings drill saws and blowtorches to the kitchen.

His resume is just as colorful: graffiti artist, degrees in physics and philosophy (his wedding cake philosophy is "No Rules!"), studies at the Culinary Institute of America, and executive chef at Colorado’s Vail Cascade Hotel and Resort.

More so than a pastry chef and cake decorator, Goldman, with his black leather and dark shades, resembles a bass player in a hip band – and that he is!

He’s also one of the most esteemed cake decorators in the nation and owns and operates Charm City Cakes in Baltimore where his cakes have included a piece of rare black Wedgwood china (commissioned for Hillary Clinton), a slew of outrageous and beautiful wedding cakes, a pack of family dog tribute cakes and massive mechanized cakes with edible moving parts and $20,000 price tags.

Another popular Food Network cake designer with an unlikely background is Warren Brown, the host of Sugar Rush. A Washington D.C. lawyer, Brown had always enjoyed cooking, but he had a fear of baking.

When he overcame this fear, he discovered his true love and left the courtroom to open Cakelove, his specialty cake and pastry business where his cupcakes and three-layer buttercream with fresh strawberries preside.

Viewers of Sugar Rush enjoy following Brown to restaurants, pastry shops and bakeries around the country and then back to his kitchen where he makes a recipe learned along the way.

For program listings, visit www.FoodNetWork.com. You’ll also find here, the Food Network Newsletter, which delivers weekly updates on contests, recipes, food ideas to 2.5 million people who enjoy the fringe benefit of the opportunity to compete for their own food network series, The Next Food Network Star.

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Samantha Mitchell, Co-Author
Cake Decorating Made Easy! Vol. 1 & 2
The World’s First Cake Decorating Video Books

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