Josh Classen of CTV and Sheri Somerville hosted this years Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts 2011 Cake Walk. The theme was Johnny Cash and as usual there was a silent auction and loads of cakes! The venue changed from the Sutton Place Hotel to the Oasis Conference Centre, an amazing venue which I highly recommend.

Jeffery flew in from Los Angeles to judge this event and the frantic run from the airport to the venue was well worth it to see the calibre of cakes this year. Julie Sarra, a producer from the Food Network Challenge, had asked Jeffery to scout new talent last year and some of the participants this year have had their contact information submitted already!

Participating Bakers, Cake Decorators, and Chefs included: Cake Couture, Over the Top Cakes, The Art of Cake,Crave, Whimsical Cake Studio, Cake It With Sue, Sweetly Styled and Cheryl’s Creations. This years first place winner and audience favourite was Annie Dam at Cake Couture. She spent 3 days sculpting this amazing cake and it had the best texture, flavour balance and composition of the cakes presented. On top of that Annie had a cake decorating book published as well. In Second Place came Over the Top Cakes, great height and wonderful composition representing the song "Tennessee Flat Top Box". Third place went to seasoned competitors, Guenter Hess and Gloria Bednarz of The Art of Cake. They worked in their signature modeling chocolate medium. As usual a great eye for detail and thin delicate chocolate roses and fine figurine sculpting.

They replaced the cat walk performances with entertainment based on Johnny Cash tunes by Kira Hladun as well as the Brett Kissel band. This year they incorporated the Judges input more by giving them a microphone to comment on the cakes as they were presented and the accompanying song was preformed. Jeffery gave the cake contributors a voice and enlightened the audience to the challenge of each cake as well as the time and cost contributed by the cake donators.

Jeffery's fellow judges were: Chef John Berry, Vinod Varshney-head of culinary arts at NAIT, along with Sal Caltagirone-retired NAIT instructor and coach of Culinary Team NAIT, and Edmonton Journal’s food columnist and food blogger Liane Faulder.

Photographer Ken Isla recorded the event in the images below.

For more information on the teams participating or for TICKET information please visit: www.ninahaggertyart.ca.

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