And The Winners Are...

Every year Heritage has it's Spaghetti Dinner & Men's Dessert Contest. They say it's friendly fun, but I know those guys bake to win. Remember last year's entries? We were blown away! Taigen realized this was not your average man's dessert contest. Needless to say Taigen's been conniving and planning for months now. When I say months, I mean months. He was talking about it way back in October when we were in Colorado. He did research online and finally discovered the cake he wanted to make. He did a trial run last week and the results were good. He tweaked a few things and submitted his entry tonight. The pressure was on.

There was a lot of smack talkin' going on between the men. I must say that the prelude to the dessert wasn't bad either. We had spaghetti and meatballs (or Power Balls as we ladies call them, because the recipe is from a lady with the last name of Powers.) that were fabulous, scrumptious salad & bread. You had to pace yourself because you knew the desserts were coming.

Drum roll please...After much tasting, deliberations and maybe even more tasting, the non-biased judges awarded the following prizes:

Best Tasting: Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake made by the same guy that made Marshall & Shaylen's birthday cakes and the winner of last year's Most Creative award. (Sorry, I couldn't get a picture of it before the judges cut into it. It did look beautiful.)

Most Creative: Supreme Cookie Pizza made by the same guys that made the Fenway Park cake last year. (And the recipient of most of Taigen's smack talking. Let's just say they are a bad influence on each other!) These guys baked a cookie, smothered it with red frosting, grated a white chocolate bunny for the cheese (isn't that morbid?), and used fruit strips, black licorce, fruit roll ups and marshmallows for the desired toppings. Then they put it in a real pizza box and had an additional side of anchovies (Swedish Fish). Too cool! It looked awesome! Don't you think they did a great job?

Best Looking: Now of course, you all know that I think Taigen is good looking! But to have the judges think he is the best looking is something to brag about! Just kidding. I'm talking about his grand piano cake. He carved two chocolate cakes by hand to the desired shape and frosted them as smoothly as he could. He placed it on two foam boards cut in the shape of a piano to support it. There were Lindt White Chocolate bars for the white piano keys and Lindt Milk Chocolate for the black keys. He also cut some foam board, wrapped it in foil and frosted it with melted chocolate for the raised piano lid and propped it up with a dowel. For the legs, he bought white cake pillars and spray painted them brown so he could get the desired effect. It didn't taste too badly either! Needless to say, I was proud as punch of him. I told him tonight that he got in touch with his inner-Martha Stewart.