These are much more display art than cake. I love it. The first is by Jenny Amaya, who was an instructor at one of the demos. The dinosaurs and trees are hand sculpted and the pond is poured sugar! There are even sugar spider webs on the trees. It had crazy details.

Dino-mite!

It’s a short jump from dinos to dragons. Is this a cartoon I should recognize? Either way, it is stinking cute!

Cloudy with a chance of flying dragons

And if you love the wide-eyed creatures, check out the eyeballs on that octopus. It’s looking at me— Eeek!

Spooky

It is so hard to edit down my bazillion cake room photos. Here are some more of my favorites.

This one I love for the pure snark of it. Carrot cake! Get it?! I love it.

"Carrot" Cake

This one is also a fun twist on traditional and faintly reminiscent of the “Bond” wedding cake that was floating around for a while.

A wedding to make JJ Abrams proud

All kidding aside, these ICES folks know how to stack an elegant cake.

So romantic!

Anyone for a piece of chocolate? Each layer is full of truffles- under the gold lid and in the red and white boxes.

Life is like a box of chocolates...

Ok, I’ll post one more day of convention stuff and then you will be forced to read about MY cakes again. Ha!

All ICES members are invited to participate in the cake display room. There is no judging or competition, just sharing of favorite cakes. Each one is accompanied by a card that explains the materials and skills used in making it. Each cake must be made of food, or be able to be reproduced with cake. In other words, some of these have Styrofoam inside (which is why they can travel and sit out for a week), but all COULD be made with cake.

Here are a few that I liked. My apologies that I don’t have the names of all of the artists. I made a  quick run through with the camera and realized I did not photograph the name cards. Lesson learned!

Treehouse- with adorably sculpted inhabitants

Closeup of inhabitants

Cake shaped like a flower pot, topped with gumpaste flowers

Sculpted pizza guy

More tomorrow!

Alright, it is time to hang up my bright pink ”First Timers” badge and head on home. This was a great experience and it will be cool to try out my new skills and tricks in my own kitchen. Never mind my bag of new toys, shiny and new, begging to be used! So, in review I ask myself:

• Was the schedule exhausting? Yes. (a rookie error to do too much)
• Was my luggage pushed to its limits with new equipment, catalogs, and samples? Yes.
• Was my extroverted nature saturated with new friends from all over the county, as well as new international friends? Yes.
• Was my notebook continually full of new ideas, suggestions, recipes, contacts, and resources? Yes.
• Was it enough to drive some attendees to require copious amounts of Xanex? Yes.

But in the end it exceeded my expectations by setting my mind churning with new ideas and inspirations. I hope to return to San Diego in 2010 and/or Charlotte in 2011, but I know I will see many of these folks at cake shows and competitions before them.

Since so much of the ICES experience is about sharing creativity I am going to close out by posting photos from the Magnificent Mile  Art Showcase (aka the cake room). I don’t have a reliable list of who brought which cake, but they are from all 50 states and several other countries.

Cake room