This month Dress for Success Greater Orlando brought together local bakeries to battle it out for bragging rights at its signature event, Cupcake Challenge. Each year bakeries all over Central Florida bring their best flavors and most unique designs for this sweet competition. A panel of expert foodie and local celebrity judges chose winners in categories like best flavor, most unique presentation and best overall. This year’s event took place at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management.
This year’s judges included Lauren Delgado, Orlando Sentinel food reporter; Emily Ellyn, Retro Rad chef and competitor on the Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars”; Faiyaz Kara, Orlando Weekly restaurant critic; Katrina Lee-Jones, president and creative fashion director at StylesByKatrina; Kia Malone, Daily Buzz host; Tiffany Nguyen, senior writer at Tasty Chomps; Christina Thomas, food blogger and creator of Go Epicurista; and Allison Walker Torres, Spectrum News 13 entertainment reporter and IN FOCUS host.
Each of the bakeries submitted one cupcake that was judged in four categories – best design, best frosting, best overall, and crowd favorite. All those attending had the opportunity to try out cupcakes from all the bakeries and then vote for their favorite. With all the amazing options it was definitely hard for me to pick just one!
But in the end, there could only be 4 winners… or in the case of this year’s event, just two. Central Florida Cakes won for best design while Jillycakes won best frosting, best overall, and crowd favorite. I must admit that Jillycakes is a personal favorite of mine so I wasn’t surprised when she walked away with three of the four awards.
And the icing on the cupcake – the whole event was for a good cause. Proceeds benefit Dress for Success Greater Orlando and support its mission of empowering women to reach economic independence by providing professional attire, development tools and a network of support.
About Dress for Success Greater Orlando
Dress for Success is an international not-for-profit organization that empowers women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support, professional attire and the development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. Since starting operations in 1997, Dress for Success has expanded to more than 150 cities in 30 countries and has helped more than 1 million women work towards self-sufficiency. Dress for Success Greater Orlando was founded more than 15 years ago and aims to serve more than 500 clients a year. Signature events for the organization include Hats off to Success and Cupcake Challenge. For more information about Dress for Success Greater Orlando, call 407-628-0506 or visit greaterorlando.dressforsuccess.org.
