2016 cakes

The winning cake was Edwardo Rhodes’s rendering of the Madame Walker Theater in Indianapolis.

Edwardo Rhodes and his cake

But we had other impressive entries. Here they are.

The I Fell Building, by Bethany Emenhiser

The Buskirk-Chumley Theater, by Amanda Barge, Julie Thomas, Ramona Barge (age 11), and John Barge

The Monroe County Courthouse, by four members of the Bloomington Boys and Girls Club, assisted by Bethany Emenhiser

Smokestack at the Johnson’s Creamery Building on Bloomington’s west side by Nancy Hiller

Thanks to our 2016 sponsors!

Thanks in advance to the following sponsors of our upcoming event on Saturday, May 14th, in the Atrium of City Hall, Showers Commons!

One World Catering

Revolution Bike & Bean

Saunders and Associates Realtors

Lahn Law

Springpoint Architects PC

NR Hiller Design, Inc.

Golden Hands Construction, Inc.

Downtown Bloomington, Inc.

Bloomington Board of Realtors

Courtyard Marriott

Deb Tomaro, RE/MAX Acclaimed Properties

City of Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission

Monroe County Historic Preservation Board of Review

Our judges for 2016

We are delighted to announce that our judges for this year’s event on Saturday, May 14th, will be

Mayor John Hamilton

Nancy Hiestand, retired staff member for the City of Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission and multi-year member of a team that has produced award-winners for the Architectural Cake Contest.

Lynn Schwartzberg, General Manager, One World Catering and Events and professional baker.

Our speaker in 2016

We are delighted to announce that the speaker for our event on Saturday, May 14, 2016 will be Julia Bache.

An enthusiastic Girl Scout from 1st grade through 12th grade, Julia was named a 2014 National Young Woman of Distinction. For her Girl Scout Gold Award Project, Julia nominated the Buck Creek Rosenwald School to be on the National Register of Historic Places, becoming the youngest person in Kentucky to successfully nominate a historic site. She created a traveling museum exhibition about the historic yet endangered Rosenwald Schools that has been installed in museums, historical societies, and libraries across Kentucky. Julia has also spoken to community groups and national audiences about the Rosenwald Schools and how to involve youth in historic preservation; her speaking engagements have included the 2013 and 2014 National Trust for Historic Preservation Conferences, the 2014 Girl Scouts National Convention, the 2015 Young Women Lead Conference, and the 2015 National Rosenwald Schools Conference. She is currently a freshman in the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and looks forward to engaging in historic preservation research this summer.

 

 

 

Thanks to our 2015 event sponsors!

Big thanks to the following corporate sponsors of this year’s event:

Pizza X

Goldin Appraisal Group

Golden Hands Construction, Inc.

Mark Longacre Construction, Inc.

Saunders and Associates

Revolution Bike & Bean

Lahn Law

… and to our media partner, The Herald-Times

… and to our individual sponsors:

Duncan Campbell

Nancy Hiestand

Kyla Cox Deckard

Dave Harstad

Sam De Sollar

 

Announcing the judges for 2015

Representing the field of historic preservation, we’ll have Raina Regan, a Community Preservation Specialist with the Indiana Landmarks Foundation’s Central Regional Office. Raina provides technical assistance, advocacy, and education to a 13-county region surrounding Indianapolis, including the cities of Kokomo, Bloomington, and Columbus. Raina previously worked for three years as an architectural historian with the State of Indiana.

Representing the culinary arts, we’ll have Jeff Mease, Founder and CEO of One World Enterprises, one of this year’s event sponsors.

This year’s local celebrity will be Bob Zaltsberg, Editor of The Herald-Times, another of this year’s event sponsors.

Advance thanks to our judges, sponsors, bakers, and to all who attend the Old-House Expo & Architectural Cake Contest in 2015.

And this year’s winners are…

Judges Mark Dollase, Chef Jeffrey Taber, and Yael Ksander hard at work

After extended deliberations, the judges made their picks.

The award for Best Taste and Texture went to Caroline Clay, Cheryl Munson, and Danielle Bachant-Bell for their delectable maple buttercream-frosted “Investigations around the Smokehouse,” depicting the smallest structure at the Garton Farmstead in Bloomington, headquarters of Bloomington Restorations, Inc.. Making this cake extra special was the source of the maple syrup used in the frosting; although the judges didn’t know it, the syrup came from the farmstead’s own maple trees, which are tapped each spring by Mike Bell.

The winning smokehouse cake

The farmstead team also took the contest’s top award, for Most Accurate Representation. Congratulations to Danielle, Cheryl and Caroline!

The award for All Around Awesomeness in presentation went to Cathy Spiaggia and Duncan Campbell for their “Barn Good Cake,” a sophisticated rosemary olive-oil chocolate chunk creation depicting a log bank barn on Breeden Road in southwestern Monroe County.

Duncan and Cathy baked an elegant, barely sweet confection that contained eight cups of olive oil

We’re deeply grateful to all of the bakers, as well as the judges and this year’s private sponsors: Revolution Bike & Bean, Topo’s 403, Monroe Furniture Restoration, Mark Longacre Construction,Golden Hands Construction, Bloomingfoods, Bloom Magazine, and NR Hiller Design, along with our public sponsors, the Monroe County Historic Preservation Board of Review and the City of Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission.

Here are the rest of this year’s entries:

Carol Seaman, “The Rise at Orangeville”

 

Carrol Krause, Monroe County’s first courthouse

 

Magda Hiller and Wyatt Hiller Wilson, “Cake of the Singing Winds”

 

The Monroe County History Museum’s cemetery committee “cemetery cake”

And special congratulations to Lily Bruce, a freshman at Bloomington High School South, for her depiction of the historic West Baden “colored church,” a Gothic Revival structure wrought in delicious vanilla cake with homemade marshmallow fondant! Unfortunately the tower began to separate from the main structure shortly after the cake was delivered. Some visitors declared that this made Lily’s their favorite cake, since it showed the church in danger of collapse–quite fitting, considering that the actual church is currently on Indiana Landmarks’ Top Ten Most Endangered list.

Lily Bruce’s West Baden “colored church” cake

 

Nancy Hiller’s “Sweet Remembrance” depicts a traditional carved limestone stump grave marker, this one in the Stout cemetery off of Bloomington’s Arlington Road

Announcing the judges for 2014

This year we are delighted to have Mark Dollase, Jeffrey Taber, and Yael Ksander as our judges.

Mark Dollase is the Vice President of Preservation Services at the Indiana Landmarks Foundation, the largest statewide nonprofit preservation organization in the country. He was promoted to this position, in which he is responsible for Indiana Landmarks’ eight regional offices, in 2005 after serving as director of several regional offices.

Mark received his B.A. from the University of Nebraska and came to Indiana to attend Ball State University’s College of Architecture, where he completed graduate coursework towards a Master’s degree in historic preservation. His projects have included the rescue of the West Baden Springs Hotel, completion of the Fall Creek Place real estate development in Indianapolis, and restoration of the 1910 Glossbrenner Mansion. He also founded Indiana Modern, a group which focuses on preserving the state’s mid-century modern architecture and design.

Mark serves on numerous boards of community-based organizations. He was appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in 2006 to serve on the Indiana Main Street Council, to which which he has been reappointed twice. He is on the board of the Rivoli Center for the Performing Arts, where he champions the restoration of the 1927 theater in Indianapolis, and is past president of the Greater Allisonville Community Council, a coalition of 22 neighborhoods in northeast Indianapolis, where he resides.

Photo credit: hoosierhistorylive.org

Chef Jeffrey Taber chairs the Hospitality Program at Ivy Tech Bloomington. Formally trained at the prestigious Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, Taber previously taught at the Art Institute of Ohio and owned his own bakery from 2007-2009. Taber is a familiar face to readers of Bloomington’s Herald-Times, which publishes Taber’s series of weekly cooking videos.

Photo credit: Ivy Tech College Bloomington News, HeraldTimesOnline.com 2012 http://ivytechbloomington.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/video-how-to-make-chicken-stock/

Yael Ksander hosts music and talk programs on Bloomington’s NPR affiliate, WFIU, where she has worked since 2000. She produces features on artists, writers, and other creative people for WFIU’s Artworks series, writes for A Moment of Indiana History, and co-hosts A Moment of Science,  which reaches a national audience.  Ksander is one of the principal organizers and MC of Bloomington’s annual Trashion Refashion show, a benefit for the Center for Sustainable Living, a 501c3 environmental organization that works to promote sustainable living in the Bloomington community, and Discardia, a retail store that sells items made from recycled materials by local craftspeople. Ksander holds a MFA in painting from Indiana University, an MA in art history from Columbia University, and a BA  from the University of Virginia, where she studied languages and literature.   

Photo credit: Rich Remsberg

A Young Baker to Watch

We were thrilled to have Sara Schwabe enter the 2013 Architectural Cake Contest. Although Sara, a 20-year-old student from Mitchell, Indiana, is an avid baker, this was her first cake contest. We were blown away by her ambitious (and tasty!) rendering of the Taj Mahal.

Sara’s rendering of the Taj Mahal in white almond sour cream cake with buttercream frosting

I was so impressed by Sara’s ingenuity that I asked about other examples of her work. Her mother sent the following mouthwatering pictures.

Hobbit cake by Sara Schwabe

Sara with her cake post-demolition

You can see more photos from the event and listen to Yael Ksander’s Artworks segment, which was broadcast on WFIU.

A few photos from the 2012 contest

Cheryl Munson cuts into a breathtaking model of the Paris Dunning House, named for Indiana’s ninth governor, Paris Dunning. Dunning was the only person ever to hold every elected seat in state government under the 1816 constitution.