Bridal Show and Duff Meeting

Duff Signing our Ace of Cakes book

Wow, what a whirlwind weekend!  We worked on our show cake until 4 in the morning, setup our booth, finished 1400 samples, networked with vendors, and had a brief encounter with Duff Goldman!  It seems that all of the advertising brought in a lot of potential brides and cake fans from around the area.

At only 1 hour into the show, we had to leave out booth and wait in line in the VIP room to get Duff autograph.  This took us almost an hour and we only got to spend about 15 seconds with him.  We really hoped we would have had more face time with the Ace of Cakes!.

Than it was back to our booth and a few minutes later at 3:00 Duff came onstage for a live interview.  Since we had been out of our booth for so long, we had a line of brides waiting to talk to us, so we didn't get to hear a lot of what he said.  The tidbits we did hear:

• He told bakers and potential bakers to make sure they always value their work and make sure they always got paid for their time.  You bakers out there know that we have all made this mistake.
• The biggest news was that Duff has purchased a bakery location in Los Angeles and will soon move out there to start Charm City Cakes LA.  Geoff will be promoted to executive chef and will be running Charm City Cakes Baltimore.  I was SO shocked to hear this, Duff without Geoff is like peanut butter without jelly!

At 4:30 all the bakers in the competition were asked to go over to the competition area and wait by their cakes.  Chad and I left our booth once again and went and waited (and waited).  Eventually we were told that only one baker from each team (sorry Chad!) could go back stage with Duff to wait for the competition results.  When we got back there, Duff was not there, the coordinators had whisked him to some back room area.

Our cakes were judged, but we weren't present for the judging, and we didn't get to see our score sheets, but my brother was nearby taking pictures when Duff starting judging our cake.  Duff's first words were "Damn, that's a nice cake!". Whooooo, I was on cloud nine when I heard that (still am)!

Duff wasn't the only celebrity there!

We also got a visit from Shannon from Family Bites Blog!  She came all the way down from Nashville!  We hadn't seen here since the Food Blogger Forum back in September and it was good to catch up with her.

Rumor even has it that she got so close to Duff at point that she could have hugged him, but resisted the urge!  LOL!

And we met some new friends too.  I spoke to these 2 ladies for the longest time.  They are aspiring decorators and we talked about the wonders of modeling chocolate.  Once it was all said and done I don't even think they told me their names.  So ladies, if you happen to read this post, please leave a comment and introduce yourselves!!

As always, I appreciate all of you that stop by and read my blog and especially those of you that take the time to comment on my posts.  This blog has been cake poor for the last week or so, but I will definitely have a cake for you on Tuesday.  I am doing my first cake for Icing Smiles this weekend!