Five Fantastic Birthday Cakes Give Judges A Treat
Liverpool Daily Post - 29.08.07
Imagine it was your birthday, and not one, but FIVE fantastic birthday cakes turned up.
Now imagine that each of the five cakes had been lovingly created by the chefs at one of Liverpool’s top restaurants.
That was the treat in store at the Liverpool Daily Post’s Old Hall Street headquarters yesterday, when the entrants for our City of Liverpool 800th Birthday Cake competition arrived for judging.
The cakes were all absolutely wonderful, and each was an ideal tribute to the city on its special birthday.
They certainly won the approval of the city’s business community when they went on sale at our special charity street stall as part of the celebrations, selling out in record time.
It seems almost churlish to talk of winners and loser when confronted with such excellence, but a competition is a competition, and a gallant team of judges, led by our managing director Sarah Wilde, had the incredibly tough but incredibly enjoyable job of deciding the winners.
The categories were:
- Best Presented Cake: for the cake that looked the best, and had been produced with the most skill and imagination.
- Best Overall Cake: for the cake that had best appearance and flavour to win overall.
- The People’s Cake: for the cake that sold most quickly on the charity cake stall.
The entrants were as follows:
Beatles Cake: A delicious light sponge, with sweet, tasty icing. An absolute delight to eat, and fantastic design, with the Yellow Submarine and a tubby little Fab Four taking pride of plaice. (Made by Room at 62 Castle Street)
Liver Bird Cake: This was a rich, delicious, generously filled fruit cake moulded into the shape of the city’s Liver Bird emblem. It looked and tasted stunning. (Made by 60 Hope Street)
800 Cake: This was the richest cake, being made entirely of shades of dark and milk chocolate. It was a chocoholic’s idea of heaven, iced lovingly with an 800th birthday message. (Made by Ziba Restaurant at the Racquet Club, Chapel Street.)
Charter Cake: This sponge cake was lovely to look at, and even better to eat. It was a little heavier than the Beatles cake, but scored heavily for the sheer patience and skill involved in lovingly reproducing the wording of King John’s Charter, completely in icing. (Made by Simply Heathcote, Beetham Plaza)
Tunnel Cake: Another terrific design, consisting of the entrance to the Mersey Tunnel, with Liver Birds sitting proudly on top, and the lyric of “In Our Liverpool Home” engraved in icing on a song sheet. Inside the quarter-inch thick white icing was a gooey, scrumptious fruit cake. (Made by Filni Restaurant at the Radisson SAS Hotel, Old Hall Street)
And the winners were:
Best Presented Cake… The Tunnel Cake. This was the toughest category, because they all looked great, and completely original. Best Overall Cake… The Beatles Cake. Peoples Cake… 800 Cake.
Beatles at No 1
Best Overall Cake
The Beatles Cake. This Cake looked…well, fab! And the flavour both of the light jam-filled sponge and the icing around it was sensational. Special mention once again to the Liver Bird Cake, a wonderfully moist, tasty fruit cake, moulded with remarkable skill.
The Peoples Cake
The 800 Cake. One look at all that rich chocolate was enough to drive street party-goers into a buying frenzy.
But the biggest winner was the Daily Post’s official charity, the NSPCC Safe Place Appeal, which will be receiving proceeds from the sale of our cakes. Daily Post editor Mark Thomas said: “It has been a fantastic competition, and on behalf of our newspaper and the NSPCC I would like to thank every one of the restaurants who took part and really entered into the spirit of the big day. They all went to a huge amount of trouble, and helped make sure that the Old Hall Street party was a great success, and that our charity benefited from it.
All the restaurants taking part baked two identical cakes, one to be sold on the day, and one to be raffled for the NSPCC. The raffle winners were: Alison Aibee, Catherine McDermott, Anne Mollis, Elizabeth Edge and Sally Knight.
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