Cake-off! Cake Competition Rewards Edible Art

Budding bakers have cooked up complicated cakes with intricate designs to make edible art.

Creations included characters from the television show ‘The Simpsons’, a tiger covered in flowers and a deer drinking from a lake.

The Threadcakes competition, a rival to BBC’s Great British Bake Off, asked bakers around the world to create sponge-based treats inspired by Threadless’s printed t-shirts.

The winning 3D cake, made by 29-year-old Kylie Mangles, was based on a cut-out version of the Simpson’s character Ralph.

Kylie spent five days working around the clock to bake the ribs and bones and decorate the cartoon character with fondant.

Winner of the 2D category Megan Matsumoto, 22 from California, said of her design ‘Fantasy Space’: “Sculpting and painting all the gumpaste and fondant pieces took about three weeks or so, but only because I was so busy and could only work on them a little bit here and there.

“When all the pieces were done, I baked and finished the cake in one day.”

Other standouts include a deer with foliage sprouting from its back, which was made in thirty hours over three days, and a cat wearing goggles which took a week to assemble and included buttercream for the fur.

Chris Cardinal, from Threadless, said: “A panel of judges reviews each cake and picks their ten favorites in the 2D and 3D categories and submits them to me. Their ballots are tallied and the winners are selected.

“This year's best entries had a lot of complexity and really accurate execution of the original design.”