Not your momma's cake decorating

Washington - The crowd sported more biceps tattoos than bifocals. More body piercings than pacemakers. More geeks than grandmas. And that was a bit surprising, because the event was all about cake decorating.

"I made Darth Vader's head once," one cake artiste told me. "It was red velvet cake on the inside."

"A dragon, that was my favourite cake I did," said another. "Claws. Fire from the mouth. It rocked."

"A bride of Frankenstein wedding cake," yet another said.

The world of cake decorating is no longer solely encrusted with sugar roses, frosting swags and buttercream basket weaves. I have watched this world change in the past few years. And to describe this, I'll have to admit my own obsession.

It was about 2 o'clock one morning when my husband realised that my cake jones was worse than he thought. I was hunched over the kitchen counter, hacksawing furiously at a wooden structure.

"I thought you said you were staying up late to make a birthday cake," he moaned.

"I am. This is the internal structure for the rocket ship. It's going to be at least two feet tall, so it needs an infrastructure so it won't fall over," I replied, having just finished my third Red Bull.

"You may want to start thinking about what it is that people say about you when you leave a room," he said, and went back to bed.

When my boys awoke later in the morning (and I hadn't gone to bed yet), they were presented with my vision: a toddler-size purple rocket ship, with edible silver trim and dragee rivets, a bubble porthole and curled fondant flames bursting from its thrusters. It was lemon cream and raspberry on the inside.

"It's official. You have lost your mind," my husband said.

"Wow, Mom! I love it!" my older son squealed.

Case closed.

In addition to that 2am rocket, I've sculpted a train, a Mickey Mouse, a princess, a pirate ship, fat babies, a mini Lego figure, a rubber duckie and a floppy hat. I am currently obsessed with how to depict the suction cups on an octopus.

Like most cake-decorating addicts, I figured I was a little bit alone in this, me and the cake ladies who make those flowery ones for their grandbabies.

Then a guy in Baltimore named Duff Goldman showed up on TV, and people began to understand me. He's bald, has a soul patch, went to art school, can weld and spray paint and comes across a little like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. His extreme cakes are the subject of one of the Food Network's most popular shows, Ace of Cakes. It can be argued that his shop, Charm City Cakes, has helped to fuel a cake revolution.

Sometime in the past decade, a really cool cake went from being big and flat, with a frosting-piped drawing of a truck, to a three-dimensional sculpture of a truck, wrapped with an edible, Play-Doh-like substance called fondant, airbrushed with food colouring and gilded with edible silver dust. If it was made in Goldman's shop, the wheels probably moved and smoke blew out the exhaust pipe.

For some reason, this subgenre has found itself flourishing with a sort of geeky/rockabilly/goth/ techie vibe. "Oh, I'm totally a techie looking for another way to channel my creativity. We're techies by day, cakies by night," said Andrea Kojan, a tech-support worker who makes wildly gorgeous cakes on weekends. "A lot of people cake."

I knew it. Cake is a verb!

Burton Farnsworth - I swear this is true - made a cupcake depicting an edible Lenin wrapped in a hot dog bun surfing a fondant chunk of dog poop. Farnsworth is a graphic designer in Virginia who wears all black and loves the sculptural quality of contemporary cake decorating. "I didn't even eat cake before I discovered this," said Farnsworth, who cakes on the side at CakeFX.

I met these folks this month in Maryland at a book signing by a woman who makes a living blogging about cakes gone wrong. Because, of course, half the fun of any sport, especially for amateurs, is relishing professional bloopers. And on Cakewrecks.com every day, Jen Yates posts a photo of a cake that is hilariously tragic.

A few fans at the signing weren't decorators; they just appreciate the somewhat dark, edgy humour of the blog.

But those of us who decorate found one another. We exchanged ideas, showed photos (some carry pictures of their greatest cakes in their wallets - really) and lamented our own wrecks.

We debated the chasm between buttercream and fondant, compared tactics for internal structures and decided that, even if it's just us and the grannies, our madness is kinda cool. - Washington Post