Wellington cake sculptor Dorothy Klerck is over the moon after receiving a “Cake Oscar” for the life-size elephant cake that she produced earlier this year. It is the first time a South African has been recognised with a prestigious international Cake Masters Magazine award.
“It’s so incredibly unreal, because it is such a big award,” Klerck said to Paarl Post shortly after the awards ceremony in Birmingham, UK. “I’m overwhelmed and incredibly happy.”
The UK-based Cake Masters magazine is distributed to 44 countries, and has nearly a million followers on Facebook. The awards presented each year are considered among the most important in the sugar art world.
Klerck travelled back from the UK earlier this week after receiving the award for the best showpiece of the year at the Cake International show. There she was one of the celebrity bakers who shared some of their trade secrets in the show’s Cake International Theatre.
She was accompanied to the UK by Paarlite Elmarie Louw, of Ella’s Cakes and Sugar Art. Louw, together with Robyn Potter of Chocswirl Cakes in Durbanville, were Dorothy’s go-to people during the construction of the 2,4 m high cake of an elephant with her calf.
It was made in June this year for the Good Food and Wine Show in Cape Town.
About 150 giant sheets of cake were used as part of its construction. These were held together with 25 kg of buttercream. Klerck and her assistants melted 120 kg of chocolate, and used 160 kg of fondant to cover the elephant duo’s bodies.
The immense feat made of cake, fondant and chocolate was a joint project between the Good Food and Wine Show, The Elephant Project SA and Slim Lady Wines.
Sponsorship of, among other things, the cake and butter icing used in the construction was from Value Baking Supplies and icing colours from Barco Colours.
“We estimated that the cake weighed about a ton,” said Dot of what must surely be the heaviest, highest and by far the largest sculpted cake ever made.
Last year, a life-size rhino cake she also made for the Good Food and Wine Show was one of the finalists in the Cake Masters Magazine Awards.
This year, Klerck beat other entries in the showpiece category, from countries as far afield as the UK, USA and Puerto Rico, to take top honours.
