Local baker's sweet dream crumbles on TV show
The theme was "pirates," but it was warm air and 70-plus pounds of rolled fondant that scuttled Bob Brougham's dream of winning the TLC network's "Ultimate Cake-Off."
The owner of The Cakery in North Aurora went down in spectacular fashion, as he watched his cake - which was 6-feet, 4-inches tall and weighed about 400 pounds - collapse chunk by chunk.
"Your cake does look like it has been through the battle," said Ray Kula, an organizer of the Long Beach Pier Daze Pirate Invasion Faire and Festival, the client.
The show was broadcast Monday night. Brougham's and two other teams competed for a $10,000 prize. At the start of the show, Brougham proclaimed his fervor for size: "When I do cake I like to do big cake. It's go big or go home. It's Bob's Big-Ass Cakes."
But the buttercream frosting on the 18 white sheet cakes used to make a towering treasure map couldn't stand up to the fondant he laid over them. Brougham couldn't ship his own cake to the show's taping in California, and relied on a supplier there. That cake turned out to be lighter than what he usually uses, he said One of the judges also criticized him for not putting the cake in a walk-in cooler for a while to firm it up.
Fondant started to tear, and chunks fell, especially when a required decorative monkey was added. In the last few minutes of the nine-hour test, Brougham started sticking sugar palm trees on.
"Maybe the palm trees will distract them from the large pieces of cake they're stepping in to look at it (the cake)," he said.
He cried, saying he was most disappointed for members of his team who didn't get the joy of having their true work judged. They included his son, Jared; Diane Ahrens from Piece-A-Cake Bakery in East Dundee; and Michelle Boyd of Good Gracious Cakes in Batavia.
But when it came time for his cake to be rolled out for judging, there was Brougham, sitting in the disaster, waving a piece of cake in one hand and the monkey in the other.
"Hopefully, people will still come to me," Brougham said Monday.