This prestigeous award was won this year by Amelia Nutting of "Shuga Budz." Tuttenhall, Wolverhampton. Amelia, 20, set up her company three years ago with her mother and between them they now produce around 25 bespoke cakes a week.
Amelia says that she loves "big bold and modern design using lots of colour." Amelia had decided on a single theme for her cake and said: "Clowns are what the circus is all about for me, so I focused on them" this interpretation certainly wowed the judges who described the cake as "creative and clean, with good use of colour and finished to a high standard, with good attention to detail and a balanced design"
Nutting's cake was, in fact, decidedly unbalanced, as her square, three-tier wonky design was inspired by the unstable antics of the clowns! Each tier suggests part of a clown's outfit - a top hat, big buttons and oversized trousers and shoes. Additionally, there are three clown figurines, modelled in sugarpaste with the additional of CMC paste to give stretch whilst modelling and a hard set. Each is handpainted to suggest heavy make-up. The topmost clown squirts water from a flower ( the droplets piped in royal icing incorporating piping gel, for a wet look ) The figure in the middle has a custard-pie style cupcake at the ready and the bottom clown throws paper from a bucket. The judges loved the modelling, which they called "Good fun and characterful, and precisely done"
Our congratulations also go to the two runners up in this category who were
Caroline Occleston of the Liverpool Cake shop and Rachel Hill of Planet cake.