Baking expo is icing on the cake for sweet tooths

In just three years passionate baker Cathy Worsley has gone from birthday cakes for her kids to the high-stakes competition at Sydney’s annual Cake, Bake & Sweets Show.

Best Weekend cover: cake decorating

Three years ago Cathy Worsley was a dab hand at making birthday cakes for her three kids. Today, the 42-year-old turns out several elaborate wedding cakes a week through her successful business, Cake Arcade.

The self-taught decorator is preparing to enter the Australian Cake Decorating Championships, which operates as part of the annual Cake, Bake & Sweets Show, held next week at the Sydney Showground.

“I’ve always loved making things with my hands,” Worsley says. “I studied fine art when I was younger but didn’t want to just create pictures that would go on the wall; I preferred to put my creativity on a cake — and then eat it.”

Worsley won the novelty category in last year’s inaugural championships with a mystical masterpiece featuring an Asian goddess sitting atop a moon and holding a jade rabbit, with a pagoda, red lantern and ornate teapot around her. It looks more like a porcelain statue than something to eat.

Cathy Worsley’s Asian goddess cake won the novelty category in last year’s show.

The passionate baker began exploring cake decorating with novelty cakes for her children. But she wanted to challenge herself further and began specialising in wedding cake design. Her business took off. Now, in the busy spring wedding season, Worsley will make up to six cakes a week. Her trademark look is vintage-inspired and generally features decorative lace piping, sugar flowers and beading.

She is typical of a growing sweet treats movement in Australia, which will be celebrated at the second annual Cake, Bake & Sweets Show next weekend.

Event organiser Brad Langton hopes this year eclipses the 20,000-strong crowd at last year’s inaugural show.

As an attraction, there will be a massive edible archway — the Luna Park face made entirely of cake — under which people will pass to enter the event.

Expo visitors will be able to learn all the tricks of the trade.

“We’re anticipating greater crowds this year and going by the 50,000 members on the show’s Facebook page, we think we’ll easily pass last years numbers,” Langton says.

“People are really passionate about baking, cakes, sweets and desserts right now and it’s a trend that, like in the US, is growing.

“TV is partly responsible for driving the movement, but it has evolved from people simply being happy to watch, particularly in baking. They now want to get in there and create for themselves, have a go, and I see social media as the real driver behind this.

“It’s so easy now to share the gorgeous gooey lava cake you made, on Instagram or Facebook.”

Across three days, Sydney crowds can expect 160 demonstration sessions on stage and in dedicated classrooms, from more than 30 domestic and international chefs.

Topics will be as diverse as learning to knead dough and covering a cake in fondant, and familiar faces will include Miguel Maestro, Lyndey Milan and an exclusive appearance by American duo Southern Girl Desserts, who shot to fame after winning US TV’s Cupcake Wars with a chicken and waffle cupcake.

Cupcake stars Catarah Hampshire and Shoneji Robison of Southern Girl Desserts.

This year, leading decorators have been asked to create a cake based on what Sydney means to them, and crowds can expect to see Bondi Beach, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge in cake art displays.

A new addition to this year’s agenda is the Healthy Baking Theatre, which Langton says is aimed at people searching for less guilt-inducing baked goods and those who need to steer clear of certain ingredients for health reasons.

Rowie Dillon, of Rowie’s Cakes, will head up the Healthy Baking Theatre and aims to prove that baking without gluten, yeast, wheat or dairy can still be delicious.

“My ethos is that naughty-tasting cakes and bakes can be good for you,” Dillon says.

Suffering from the gluten-intolerant coeliac disease, the self-taught cook started her business 14 years ago and today runs two factories in Alexandria with a staff of 30 producing around 10,000 sweet items a day.

Rowie Dillon heads the expo’s Healthy Baking Theatre. Picture: Bob Barker.

At the show, she will lead up to six demonstrations a day on topics including the science of alternative flours, baking simple, healthy treats, and creating masterpieces.

Kylie Richards of Cake Decorating Central has been selling cake-decorating tools and running classes for more than a decade and says there has been a huge surge in home bakers in recent years.

“There is so much information out there for home bakers, it’s not surprising they’re coming out of the woodwork,” Richards says. “You have online tutorials and videos, blogs, shows, Pinterest and other social media, and some of the things these home bakers are creating are amazing.”

Cake Decorating Central is setting up the classrooms for the show’s demonstrations and supplying the products needed at the sessions.

“It has taken a while for a show of this size to start in Australia,” Richards says. “In the US, they have around 20 such shows a year. But as cake decorating and baking is taking off here, we are following suit.”

● Cake Bake & Sweets Show, Sydney Showground, Showground Rd, Sydney Olympic Park; June 12-14, adult single-day $30, conc $27, child $22, under-12 free, adult three-day $67, child $52, discounts for online purchases, cakebakeandsweets.com