I was wondering what you all thought about suggesting to Heath and Jackie about making next years contest more interesting.. I was thinking on how they vote on FOODNETWORK.. Originality and presentation.. Also I have heard saying that some of the cakes in the contests are more gumpaste then cake itself.. Maybe we can add a rule, 80% cake and 20% gumpaste, fondant and pulled or blown sugar.. We would have to come up with a way of explaining the %'s.. (not sure how just a thought). And we would be able to vote twice.. and let there be 2 winners.. one for originality and one for presentation.. Now I have no idea how the income is for the prizes, but maybe the prizes can be CC products.. Because I know those other books can be a on the high prize range.. Originality can come with a story on how they got that idea.. even it was making one cake from 2 designs.. It would still be original.. right???
Does this sound to complicated????????

I was thinking maybe voting for each entry in two divisions. Creativity and Technical Difficulty. Something like that maybe.

What about an all buttercream contest?

The whole contest thing is hard. I am sure everyone has their point of view on it, as I do. It's hard to vote with fondant and buttercream cakes in the same category. Fondant always wins. It looks for more "real" in my opinion if the cake is suppose to actually look like something.

I was hoping there would be seperate catagories but again, there are so many variables that I'm sure it's just too hard to please everyone. And sometimes it's quite obvious what cake was made by professionals or full time decoraters as oppose to amatures or newbies. I don't really see a way to seperate who does what because there is no way to really know if people are being honest as to their skill level.

It's all in fun but it's still hard.
KimAZ

I like your idea. But the problem is a specific set of judges would have to be designated. A points system would have to be set up for the items you mentioned. You are kind of wanting A Cake Central America type deal no pun intended. Creativity and orginality are great but tastes is also incorporated into that format as well. If it were done that way then Jackie and Heath should be the ones to designate the competitors. You could not have an all out free for all with 14,000+ individuals shooting for the same title, what would that title be?Not knocking your idea I love it.

I think that is a good idea, if we were having a more complex, and advanced kind of contest, where are very large prize was involved.

I have made some other comments regarding this topic, and some other topics here:
http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=90177#90177