Up, Up, and Away!

As many of you know, I entered a very intense 3D cookie competition at Show Me Sweets Edible Art convention. I have so much to tell you but I’ll try to keep it brief. If you know me, you know that I’m all in on everything I ever do. This contest was no different. I took a month off from cookie requests and more than a full week of vacation time. Over the past couple of months, I spent over 200 hours working on this piece. A lot of that time was spent experimenting to see what works, fixing things I broke, and planning the overall design.

On top of the very difficult feat of creating something beautiful, 3D, and gravity-defying, I, along with several other 3D artists, was followed by cameras in the final week leading up to the event and all weekend. The crew was fantastic to work and I really enjoyed the process. It did put a small wrench into my progress though because that meant giving up one day of work for filming and one day of work to clean the house and reorganize and declutter my usually messy exposed shelving. I’m sure that’s all part of their plan to put the pressure on at the last minute.

The competition theme was Dream Adventure. My piece depicted 6 hot air balloons on a world tour. The starting balloon is a globe of the earth, followed by balloons from Morocco, Brazil, France, Russia, and Japan. Each balloon depicts the word “adventure” in the language most commonly spoken in those countries and each is fashioned after a common art form from that region. Making 3D cookies this size is not only incredibly challenging, it’s also super heavy. Figuring out how to suspend 1-3 lb balloons in the air with lollipop sticks was tricky AF.

I didn’t realize how much my engineering skills would come into play with this. For instance, once I had the French balloon assembled, I adorned the bottom half with gilded gingerbread molded cookies but then it was too fragile to turn it over! So rather than being able to hold it over the basket to line it up, I had to create the basket to fit it upside down. I measured a square where I wanted to sticks to meet the balloon and created a square template with four holes to accommodate those sticks. I used a square cookie cutter to stabilize the sticks at the bottom while they dried and kept two cut templates higher up on the sticks to keep them straight. I used a third template to hand cut 4 cookies that would go inside the basket with holes to match where the sticks would need to be inserted.

I iced each panel front and back leaving room for the foundation I had created. Once the basket was completely set up and dry, I filled the basket holes with a combination of fondant and royal icing before turning the balloon right-side up and inserting the sticks. I held my breath, crossed my mental fingers and hoped hard that these sticks could support the weight of the balloon and that it would be level once it was put together. I couldn’t believe it actually worked! Once together, I was able to finish decorating the top. I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out.

The judges’ favorite was the Russian nesting doll which was described on the feedback form as “perfect in every way.” That was a HUGE compliment. I hand-painted this one using gel food colors. My original intent was to build two more dolls to fit inside but I just simply ran out of time. One of the judges told me she actually tried to open it because she thought she might find that surprise. 🙂 (Thank you to Svetlana Ilina for help with Russian!)

Japan was another hit because of my unique application of edible paper which I “decoupaged” onto the balloon with water and then hand-painted stems and kanji characters before attaching edible paper cherry blossoms. (Thank you to Chiaki Koch and her mom for help with Japanese.)

One of my personal favorites to create was the Brazilian balloon. I designed, cut, and individually painted each feather for these elaborate Carnival headdresses. The faces are made by baking gingerbread in a silicone mold and hand painting them. I made each bead out of royal icing and airbrushed them to give them the depth of color I wanted. The headdresses themselves were also done by baking in a silicone mold and hand painted using gel food colors.

Morocco was the single most difficult thing I’ve ever made…and that includes knitting a life-size bicycle! I hand cut each panel and iced with royal icing before airbrushing deep violet. Then I used a stencil to create the gold design to mimic a Moroccan tile. The embellishments are hand-painted molded cookies. I mitered all the edges of the cookies to achieve a snug fit and carefully lined up two cookies at a time at the right angles. Each set of two had to dry for 8 hours before adding the next. It was a very fragile process and it sort of kicked my ass. I don’t think it has the same impact the others have but it taught me more than the others about construction. (Thank you to Driss Benlemlih for help with Arabic script.)

For the globe, I used a mesh stencil from Evil Cake Genius and hand-cut each piece, airbrushed it and carefully applied it. The basket was hand-piped with royal icing. The edges were mitered to fit in a perfect square. I used an embossed cookie on top to hold the molded compass.

The board was sort of a disaster. I did the best I could but I really had no idea the board mattered so much in this competition. Apparently the judges hated it and I totally get that. They said it took away from the elegance of my pieces. That’s completely fair criticism. I used strips of various shades of blue fondant to create the “sky” effect on layers of stacked cookies of various shapes and sizes.

I know this was all a very long story to tell you that I didn’t win. I did finish in the top ten and they said they would send me an email to let me know where I fell within that ten. I’ll update this post once I know that answer. I scored 10.4 higher than the category average which is definitely something to be proud of. I had some stiff competition. Some of these people compete all the time and some are professional pastry chefs.

Seeing those, I knew I didn’t stand a chance but I still really had a blast challenging myself and learning a whole slew of new skills along the way.

Thanks to Leon and Mom for doing so much to help me including taking care of all my meals while I was working this, taking vacation days to help me clean and being there for me along the way. I know I was driving them crazy because I was so singularly focused on this for a while but they were patient and kind and supportive nonetheless.

And thanks to all my friends who supported me along the way–Mandy Roberts for brainstorming with me about my board and then getting her dad to build the base for me; my besties for coordinating a very generous gift that helped me buy all the supplies I needed to create this; and for all who showed up on Sunday to watch me lose, hoping I would win. You guys are the best!