Cake enthusiasts unite at Vancouver's Cake Love conference

Who would have thought that a cake event would have absolutely no real cake at all?

“We didn’t even feed the participants cake last night at the Cake Love Banquet,” said one of the event organizers, Jennifer Shaw of Picture Perfect Cakes Ltd, “feeding cake decorators cake, is like taking a professional figure skater out skating.”

Cake Love  2011show piece created by Byron Basbas, Joel Furtado, Lisha Martens, Mark Tagulao, Michelle Borne

Last weekend was Vancouver’s first cake decorating conference in over 20 years. Cake Love is a three day cake conference organized by the Vancouver Cake Society. Over 140 people from all across Canada and the U.S. registered for fondant sculpting classes, modelling classes, airbrushing sessions and more. At the conference, the participants learned to make everything from lifelike gum paste flowers to delicate poured sugar figures and more whimsical pieces like edible jewellery and Muppet-like figures.

Unique cake gallery display cakes

Cake Love 2011 featured 15 different instructors including Ruth Rickey from Oklahoma, one of the 22 Certified Master Sugar Artists in the world who taught participants the art of dusting and blending different colours to make lifelike, edible gum paste leaves.

Realistic gum paste leaves from Dusting 301 at Cake Love 2011

Cake Decorating instructor, Ruth Rickey, CMSA

Instructor Jacqueline Butler taught her students how to create delicate and realistic peonies, “these sugar peonies were created across a four hour period in two two hour classes,” said Butler.

Petalsweet Peonies and lifelike flowers

Attendees were a mixture of professional cake decorators, bakery owners, hobbyists and even some first-time cake decorators. Shirley Friesen, an Abbotsford resident had no cake decorating experience at all before attending the cake conference, “this is a new and exciting experience and everyone’s so friendly with each other no matter what level of decorating you have.”

Professional decorators such as North Vancouver’s Cake Tease owner, Theresa Lanziner attended this weekend’s event as well, “There’s so much talent in this venue, I’m so happy to be here learning.”

If you missed this year’s Cake Love conference, no worries, because the Vancouver Cake Society hopes to make this a reoccurring event. “We’d like to hold this event every two years, “said Shaw, “the conference gives everyone a chance to inspire each other.” 

Intricate cake designs from Cake Love 2011 cake gallery

This year’s event was held at the Delta Vancouver Hotel in Richmond and was organized by five British Columbian cake decorators:  Jennifer Shaw of North Vancouver, April Bellia and Tanya Muller of Vancouver, Richmond's Erlinda Jalandoon and Burnaby's Mark Tagulao.

All photos taken by John Wu