THE GREAT CHOCOLATE CAKE-OFF

OMG I won!!!!!  I still can’t believe it and it’s been almost a day already!! My face hurts from smiling so much.

It all started when I walked into Paul A Young’s chocolate boutique.   After purchasing some tasty chocolates (one of which was a white chocolate with rosemary, lavender and honey concoction) I was told about ‘London Chocolate Week’, a week full of chocolate exhibitors, events and competitions.

Perusing through the website I mentioned to my loving hubby that they were holding a chocolate cake-off at which point he immediately encouraged (one could say forced) me to sign up.  Since I’ve been on the lookout for “experiences” and “creative exploits” and I have a pretty good chocolate cake recipe (which Kanu aptly named the It’s-Got-It-All Chocolate Cake), I thought SURE, WHY NOT! Albeit I was going to back out because we had a conflicting engagement but Kanu was adamant I stay in!

The Objective:

Deliver an 8inch diameter chocolate cake

The Scoring:

20 points = 5 for presentation + 5 for texture + 10 for taste

The Judges:

Bea Vo - renowned founder of Beas of Bloomsbury (bakery/cake cafes)

Lucas Hollweg - author of Good Things To Eat and Sunday Times food writer

Chantal Coady – award-winning founder of Rococo Chocolates

Paul A Young – chocolatier and author of Adventures with Chocolate

Will Torrent – chocolate consultant and award-winning pastry chef

Dom Ramsey – senior editor of Chocablog and renowned chocolate addict

Kate Johns – organiser of London’s Chocolate Unwrapped / Chocolate Week

The Process:

20-odd cakes judged behind closed doors and a public judging of the top 5 at 4:30pm

It took me all day Saturday to bake the cake – and I mean all day – from 9:30am to almost

11pm which included running to a store halfway through to get more chocolate and a second

cake tin as my first one was leaking! 

By 10ish, the consultant/marketer side of me came out and did up a mock score.  I quickly realized I needed  to up my game in the presentation and instantly thought PULLED SUGAR – it’s considered difficult and could really make my cake look "bigger and bad-er" than it was :) Only problem – you have to make it the day you use it as it doesn’t hold well.  So I was at it again at 8:30 Sunday morning.  Happy with my cake, we left the house.

At arrival, I was told to omit my name from the recipe so naturally I asked why? And the response drowned any hope I had of being in the top 5 - “we have some prominent bloggers entering and we don’t want the judges to be biased”.  Great! And here I thought I’d be competing with amateurs and by this I was hoping people who baked like once a month maybe. 

The Competition

Anyways, we returned at 4:30 to see who is in the top 5.  I figured I could at least see what it takes to be the top 5 and maybe get some tips on my score.  Then they brought out the cakes and to my utter joy – out came my cake! I could not stop jumping up and down (literally).  My job was done! My baking skills validated!! My recipe rocking!!!  It could not get better!!

They called all 5 of us up to sit in the front and all the judges spoke of what they generally liked about the top 5 cakes – and none – not even one –  said anything about my cake.  They mentioned almost all of the cakes, some even twice, but nadda on mine.  So as you can assume, Kanu and I thought not a winner but hey top 5 still rocks.  Then they announced it....and the winner is.... the It’s-Got-It-All Chocolate Cake by Vijiti Dixit!!  I could not stop smiling as each of the judges talked about how they loved the cake!!  Some comments included:


“We went back for more of your cake”

“It was unanimous”

“The air bubbles in the cake were just perfect”


It was unbelievable being up on stage with them, hearing their encouragement to continue, getting their feedback and tips.  I felt like a winner on a reality cooking show – paparazzi style photographers, people taking pictures of themselves with my cake, the cake being distributed to the audience :)  Kanu even saw one of the judges slice himself a take home piece.  Like a true amateur I was smiling from ear to ear and gushing ‘I am so happy’ repeatedly.  

Below is a clip of the judges talking about my cake

I also got an awesome gift package - 3 signed baking books, tons of Valrhona chocolate (one of the best brands in chocolate) and a championship spoon trophy!  

It was an awesome experience and I’m so glad I entered – who knows what’s next!

Post Script by a proud hubby:

So when we were leaving, the organizer asked Vijiti if she was on Twitter or had a blog, the answer to both was "no", so she said "oh that's fine, just asking if you did, because a lot of us are on". When we got home, we looked up ChocolateWeek on twitter and found a lot of bakers and bloggers tweeting away about the competition and we were really excited to see quite a few mentions of Vijiti's cake! See our shameless compilation of all such references below!!