So I entered a contest, oh I guess it was about a few months ago... I've been so busy (what with vacations, house cleaning, yard sales and in-laws in town) I lost track and haven't had time for caking (i.e. cake blogging).
The company is called "Threadless", it's a Chicago based T-shirt company. You submit a design, the Threadless "community" votes on it and if your design gets printed, viola, you get some cash, some t-shirts.... and some street credit. It's pretty damn cool for people looking to get their ideas out there... on a t-shirt.
Any way, a few years back they (Threadless) teamed up with a blogger from Arizona who just happened to love Threadless so much he started a fan blog called http://www.lovesthreadless.com/ and thus Threadcakes was born. The idea is to create, bake, sculpt, etc a 2D or 3D edible cake from a printed t-shirt design from Threadless. You can also enter as many cakes/designs as you can bake, which is nice if you're not able to decide on just one, like me.
Each year there are a handful of prizes donated by anyone from Charm City Cakes, to of course Threadless.
The first time I came across the it was shortly after their contest in 2009 had ended. At that time I was really delving into caking and knew that I had to enter the contest next year. Truthfully, the plan to enter the contest was not to win it (although I wouldn't have complained) it was just to try something new, and be creative.... and if anything, get my name out there.
So I waited, and waited for the 2010 contest to get under way, when It finally did I took me weeks, literally, to pick a design. I finally settled on a design called "God Save the Villain" I can't really say why I decided on it, maybe it was because it's a picture of the Queen of England, and I was about to take a vacation there for the first time, or maybe it was because it also looked like the joker from Batman. Or maybe it's just because the design is bad-ass!
So started by making 5, 10" round cinnamon flavored cakes and a batch of giant cupcakes for this one. By the time everything was said and done this cakes didn't taste good (it was stale) because it took me about 4 days or so to complete it. I have a full time job (outside of caking) so it sat in my fridge for 8 hrs a day until I got home and could work on it. Which was quite unfortunate as it seemed like it would taste very good. I'll have to re-visit this recipe.
And this is the original t-shirt design.
The second design I picked was called "Summer Wind" I chose this design because I liked the colors Orange and Blue together, and it just seemed so elegant and pretty. I made a carrot cake for this one, and I never been a huge fan of carrot cake and I've also never made one, but it really was very moist and delicious! I took it to a family party and everyone just ate it up. I hand painted on the face with food coloring and made the 3D flowers from gumpaste.
And here is what the original t-shirt design looked like.
The contest ended on my Birthday, and you would've thought that had to be reason enough for me to win... but it wasn't. Like I said, though, I didn't care about winning, I just wanted to participate. Not to mention the people that won were AMAZING. Some of the cakes that were submitted really blew my mind.
Check 'em out for yourselves. You'll see, I ain't lyin'.
http://www.threadcakes.com/home
I can't wait to get back to work picking more t-shirt designs and re-creating them into cake for the 2011 Threadcake contest.
