Bronwen Weber was robbed
I caught the Simpson cake challenge on Food Network last night. Honestly I watched Iron Chef America, which I watch infrequently but do like, and did not change the channel. Anyway this is like the second time I have seen competitive cake making - side note - I guess there is one sport left where blood doping will not be a issue as extra red blood cells would not help your performance in this, though I think a quick hit to the forehead to TV executive for making cake baking a competition sport could help us all.
Anyway it seems that the queen of competitive cake making is one Bronwen Webber as she seems to be the one that all the others fear. She seems to be the Micheal Jordan of the flour set. From what I saw last night she is judged on a different set of rules then the rest of the competitors.
The team that one made a very nice cake, but it was only one sided. It seemed to be a known fact to those in the know - which does not include me - that the cakes needed to be 360 degree designs. The winning cake was really only decorated on the front. To counter this, Bronwen Webber made a unsupported 3 foot arch cake doughnut out of like 50 cakes, but lost because the colors of her Simpson characters were “a few shades off” (i.e. navy blue was royal, etc). It seems that she was not “inventive” enough and did not have enough Simpson detail - i.e. Marge was a bit ugly - for the cake judges since she based her cake around the doughnut from the movie poster(which even had jelly leaking from it as it should) and bart’s skateboard She did have the Simpson characters on the cake, but they were not the primary focus as they were ONLY on a ROTATING plate, on a film strip type display of icing, and then you had the ugly Marge Simpson character on the top of the doughnut.
My issue was the cakes were suppose to be for the Simpson MOVIE. Why not use the doughnut, which is the primary feature on the movie ad as the primary feature for a cake about the MOVIE? To me it seemed more like the judges just wanted to make a statement that Bronwen could not win for just being better then her competition, she had to be MUCH better and had to be MUCH more inventive. I think they also wanted to make a statement that she could not win simply by being there and doing great work, she had to out distance her competition by being so much better there was no question. Basically it seemed she was suppose to play on 12 foot rims while the rest could play on 10′ rims. I think if the cakes were reversed the Mary chic would have won with Bronwen’s cake and they would have told Bronwen her lack of a 360 degree design was what lost it for her.
Bottom line this was a media event and I think the judging was completely arbitrary. Based on what I saw last night there is no consistent competitive rules here and no real guidelines. All we needed to make it perfect would have been a 7.8 in a line of 9.8’s from the French judge to make this thing look more arbitrary and unevenly judged.
I like Bronwen, and I liked the cake. However…
To be truly fair, the doughnut was NOT “unsupported”. She used a molded acrylic form and stacked barely angled 8 inch round cakes around it. She didn’t hide the fact that she was using a support, in fact, she showed it off to the cameras. Then she covered it with buttercream icing.
If given that support, I’d wager that most intermediate decorators could have made the doughnut. There was a very low level of difficulty to it. Adding to that the fact that her characters were not the correct color yellow, her other colors were off, and (as you said) her Marge was ugly … she did NOT deserve to win.
Comment by
Theresa — 8/28/2007 @ 10:53 pm
Oh, and should I also mention that Bronwen made a big deal out of saying that the theme for her cake was “Marge Madness” … not “Doughnut Madness”? And that the doughnut was not a character in the movie, simply a picture on the poster?
I think she might have won if she’d have made better, more accurate characters to go with her giant doughnut … and if she’d have titled it “D’oh - nut”
Comment by
Theresa — 8/28/2007 @ 10:59 pm