interfaith baking contest

John Mayer, who happens to be a heavy musical influence of mine, has started accepting submissions for his Interfaith Baking Contest. Last year, he asked people to submit cakes and in honour of the festive seasoning and return the most moving submission would win a guitar. Unfortunately for yours truly, last year around this time I was in Central America and did not have the means to create a cake. Not this time, this time I was determined to bake a cake.

From John's blog.

I've always had a problem allowing the full brunt of Holiday Cheer into my heart. It's not that I didn't want to - in fact, I tried harder than anyone I knew - but I think I was going for the wrong points of reference; TV commercial holiday cheer can be nearly offensive if you didn't happen to have the kind of year that saw you making friends with an omni-ethnic fully gorgeous group of friends who like to dance in unison.

Then about this time last year I started getting e-mails from my brother with pictures of cakes he'd been baking. I laughed at first but when he appealed to me without sarcasm that it was undeniably fun and uplifting, I had to try it. Sure enough, baking a cake or two while listening to Christmas (okay, Holiday) music was like a giant dose of premium cheer. I had the happiest holidays in years.

I decided to start a contest on my blog wherein I challenged readers to submit their own baked goods, and the cheer just kept spreading. What I had originally thought was a clever little contest actually turned into a mainline of good feelings for everyone involved.

Here is my cake. Baked in a heart pan and iced in the colours of Christmas. The cake was moist and delicious, and the icing, even though it stated to separate was perfect (not overly sweet and very smooth). I have to send my shout out to Something Shiny, where I first discovered both the cake and icing recipe. Thank you indeed for suggesting this path!

What's even crazier, is that my cake has made round one on John's blog out of thousands of submissions. I couldn't be happier.