What a Beautiful Mess I'm In - Finale

UPDATE EDIT: I didn't win the cake decorating competition for the trip to New York to attend the New York Cake Convention. =( I know, sad. But the cake that did win was amazingly beautiful. You can see all the entries here: The Daring Kitchen NYCC Cake Competition Entries.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

Ok, this is the last installment of Mooncake. Finally you may be saying to yourself. Same here buddy. Same here.

So here's where I start taking pictures for the actual contest entry.

A single, not-shaped/carved/sculpted 9" cake base naked with no frosting or fondant. Done.

Me working tirelessly on this cake into the wee hours of the morning. Done. Lucky for me, the two mixtures of doughs was enough for me to cover this final cake and make all the designs I wanted. Since the competition seemed to be more about decorating the cake, I threw caution to the wind (mainly me throwing dad-in-law's strict adherence to making the cake look like an ACTUAL mooncake into the wind) and decorated to my heart's content. I didn't care so much about the ridges this time around and used the sides as part of the cake decorating canvas. Now we're talking.

A picture of the final, completed cake. Done. Wow, what an incredible journey. I laughed. I cried. I even swore a little bit. But all in all, it was such an amazing challenge to put myself through. I don't think I'll ever look at mooncakes the same ever again.

But since I'm here, I might as well post some other pictures of the mooncake that Ironman took when he came down to shoot a wedding (he's a wedding photographer on the side and just so happened to have his equipment with him). I'll also post some more of my own pictures when I get some more time.

It really does look like a mooncake from this angle.

I still can't believe I did this.

Some side details

Ironman is not of Asian decent, so I forgot to tell him which side was up and which side was down. He had no idea which way the Chinese characters went. Ooops!

**EDIT**

Here are some of the pictures I took throughout the process.

Up close and personal of what the designs looked like before baking

Side view of designs

Side view

 Picture taken inside, hence the warm yellow lighting

Outside shot. You can see some of the side design

The sun was really bright out the other day so it made for some great lighting