Evans shows off cake skills in TLC’s Ultimate Cake Off

Owns Wedding Cake Connection

Most people would like to have their cake and eat it too.

Chillicothean Barb Evans is one of the few people who can take advantage of that opportunity and make her own cake anytime she pleases.

As owner of the Wedding Cake Connection, Evans labors on making custom wedding cakes for the Peoria area.

She is also a certified master sugar artist, a teacher and a judge.

Her success in the cake world recently led her to an opportunity to appear on television.

While attending an ICES convention, Barb Sullivan, a friend of Evans’ from Alabama, invited her to be part of her four-man team on The Learning Channel’s “Ultimate Cake Off,” hosted by George Duran.

The show featuring Evans’ team aired Monday night on TLC, and although Evans said her group did not win, she had a lot of fun in the process.

Let them eat cake
After traveling to Los Angeles for a week to tape “Ultimate Cake Off,” Evans and Sullivan, the team captain, joined the other two members of their team, Mary Jo Dowling of Massachusetts and Amanda Combs of Alabama.

The team, competing against two other teams, were challenged to create an edible cake masterpiece with the chance to win $10,000 and have their cake highlighted at the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Thus, the theme for the concoction was “Unsung Hero,” in honor of two LA firemen.

Over the course of the next nine hours, each team made creative cakes a minimum of 5 feet tall.

As part of the challenge, there were an additional two mini-challenges — a skills test and a taste test — with the chance of causing another team to sit out for 30 minutes.

Time was of great importance, said Evans, whose team rushed to complete their idea in the allotted time.

“In the last hour, it was truly a race to the finish,” said Evans. “We were moving just about as quick as we could possibly move.”

The team erected a 6-foot-11-inch life-sized fireman sitting next to and protecting a smoldering building.

Beside the fireman sat a dalmatian puppy with a wagging tail.

“The building was 5-feet-by 3 inches tall and had a 3-by-5-foot sugar flag hanging from the top of the building,” said Evans.

Inside the building, smoke and lights added to the smoldering effect.

The more than 400-pound entry required 37 cakes to piece everything together.

The winning cake featured a child portrayed while dreaming about being a fireman one day.

“It was fun,” said Evans. “It was a whole new world going into the world of television. It was a whole new facet. It was interesting, and it was an enormous amount of work.”

Taking the cake
As owner of her own business, The Wedding Cake Connection, Evans keeps busy, but also finds some time to compete.

On March 6, she captured the grand prize at the Michigan ICES competition with a five-tier wedding cake based on the theme “wedding attire.”

Thinking outside the box, Evans chose argyle socks as her personal theme.

“It had sugar diamonds and string work in the colors that replicate the argyle socks,” said Evans.

While a high school teenager, Evans took a cake decorating class in Peoria, where she lived.

“It just kind of bloomed from there,” said Evans. “Now I teach, and decorate, and compete.
This is probably the biggest competition I’ve ever been in,” she said about the “Ultimate Cake Off.”

Her husband, Dan, who does not take part in the competitions and traveling, is extremely supportive on the home front, said Evans.

On a weekly basis, Evans said she designs three to four wedding cakes during the wedding season, April through December.

“That’s why I don’t have time to do birthday cakes,” she said.

Formerly the caterer at Pearce Community Center, she said she is proud of the Chillicothe area.

“Chillicothe has been very supportive in my career,” said Evans.

For more information about Evans, visit weddingcakespeoria.com.