Celebration Cake Business of the Year 2016

For the 12
^th year running, Renshaw sponsored the Celebration Cake Business of the Year category at the Baking Industry Awards.

Each year we’re incredibly impressed with the entries we receive, and it’s always a tough choice to pick our finalists from such a high skill level of entrants.

What makes this category so fun to judge is the theme each year, and seeing how each business interprets it. For 2016 the theme was Moulin Rouge, and as you can imagine the final cakes were a spectacle to behold.

This year we decided to shake the judging process up a little, and invited our 6 semi-finalists to our new development and training centre in Liverpool, the Renshaw Academy. We were also pleased to welcome independent judges John Slattery of Slattery in Manchester, and Sonia Young from the British Baker.

[
Elaine’s Creative Cakes, John Slattery]

The 6 cake decoration businesses that made it through to the final judging stage were; Adam’s Cakes, Elaine’s Creative Cakes, Finsbury Food Group, La Belle Cake Company, Shuga Budz and Vicki’s Incredible Edibles.

Our semi-finalists were tasked beforehand to bake and bring along a sponge cake and a fruit cake, then were judged on the day on how they filled, covered and stacked the cakes, as well as how well they tasted.

They also had 30 minutes to complete the final decorations on their Moulin Rouge themed cakes with Royal Icing. Part of the judging process was also made up of a business case for each of the competitors.

[
Vicki’s Incredible Edibles]

We rounded off the judging day with a tour around the Renshaw factory and learned how the products that had been used that day were made, such as Marzipan, Ready to Roll Icing and Royal Icing.

Our 3 finalists; Finsbury Food Group, Shuga Budz and Vicki’s Incredible Edibles were invited to the Baking Industry Awards ceremony in London Hilton, hosted by Rugby World Cup winner Matt Dawson.

And the winner is…

Finsbury Food Group

The Finsbury Food Group Cake Division is a business built around bakeries with over 100 years’ grass roots heritage. Finsbury have a flexible approach to product development, and all products are hand made from start to finish, making them unique in their category.

Andrea and Debbie from Finsbury Food Group joined us in the Renshaw Academy to take part in the final stage of judging.

To see more of the BIA action from the Renshaw Academy, watch our short video below: