IDDBA PICKS CONTEST DECORATORS

Roseanne Harper

MADISON, Wis. -- The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association has selected three top cake decorators from supermarkets across the country to compete against each other at its Dairy-Deli-Bake 2003 seminar and expo this year in Las Vegas.

The finalists chosen to participate in IDDBA's eighth annual Cake Decorating Challenge on the show floor at the event, June 1 to 3, are Kim Deskin, Rosauers Supermarkets, Spokane, Wash.; Jana Jo Blue, Dorothy Lane Market, Dayton, Ohio; and Michelle DeMicco, Publix Super Markets, Lakeland, Fla.

Deskin is associated with a Rosauers store in Hood River, Ore.; Blue with Dorothy Lane's flagship store in Dayton, Ohio; and DeMicco with a Tampa, Fla., Publix store.

This is the seventh year a decorator from Publix has made it to the IDDBA finals.

The chain, which has about 800 stores across the Southeast, usually holds intra-division and intra-region contests to pick its best decorators to enter in the IDDBA preliminaries. This year, it entered 11 of its decorators.

This year, IDDBA received three times as many entries than it ever has before. Carol Christison, IDDBA's executive director, attributed the jump in entries to a couple of factors: better marketing on IDDBA's part and the natural momentum the annual competition has picked up each year.

"Retailers are just finding this is a great way to sell cakes. They have intra-store and intra-regional or division contests to choose the decorators they want to enter. There were also a lot of manufacturers talking it up this time," she said.

As usual, choosing the finalists is a tremendous challenge because the quality of entries is so good, Christison said. And this year there was the added number of entries to go through.

"We had three times as many entries as last year, but we spent at least four times as long choosing the finalists."

Christison emphasized that IDDBA's judging of the entered portfolios is absolutely blind.

The three-day, on-site decorating competition is a tough one, involving the use of multiple skills.

"It's much more than a decorating demo. It's an intense competition in a show-floor environment. They have to create a wedding cake, then 20 to 30 cakes, enough of them to fill an eight-foot, four-shelf display case, and merchandise the case. Then, they create three different theme cakes."