Around AY’s office, we love food (check out our food section for proof), but we especially love desserts. Since it’s AY Publisher Heather Baker’s birthday this month, we’re holding a contest to find the best cake in Arkansas.

 

Bakers from around the state are submitting their best cakes for a chance to be crowned the top cake. AY staff will be whittling these submissions down to 10, and Baker and AY Editor at Large Lisa Fischer will be test-tasting them to decide the final winner. It’s all for science, right?

 

“We want to know what the best cake is [in Arkansas],” Baker says.

The first cake

The contest, which Fischer calls the “Heather and Lisa Eat Cake Because It’s Heather’s Birthday” Contest, has officially kicked off. Both Baker and Fischer have tasted their first cake, and they’re excited to tell about it.

 

“We like to have a party for anything,” Fischer says. “We’re having our readers send in – literally deliver them – their favorite fancy cakes, and we’re starting with Kelli Marks.”

 

First off, here’s a little introduction to the baker.  “She’s been a baker for years in town,” Fischer says. “She does beautiful wedding cakes, party cakes, she’s even done a funny one for me that I sent to an aunt once – she has a great sense of humor.

Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake

Marks sent over a chocolate salted caramel cake for Baker and Fischer to try out. And what did they think? Well, Fischer just about fell over from how good it was!

 

Both of them complimented Marks on integrating sweetness and saltiness into the cake.

 

“I taste the salt and the caramel,” Baker says.

 

“When you’re eating…there’s the salty and the sweet, and this has both,”

Tasty!

The judges will be evaluating the cakes based on presentation, taste and creativity on a 0-5 scale.  But we’re not going to tell you what the cakes have been scored yet. That’s for the final reveal.

 

So that’s one cake down. Only nine more to go.

READ MORE: Got Cake? AY Magazine is Looking for the Best Ones in Arkansas