Returning to its physical competition after the pandemic, the Bakery Fair 2023 named its champion, a Filipino native, Chef Perie Cudanin.
Held from March 2 to 4, the three-day fair welcomed 136 exhibitors along with other bakers, pastry chefs, and food entrepreneurs that covered one hectare of the World Trade Center where the competition took place.
Officials from the China Embassy also lent their participation to the event, joined by United States Wheat officials, as well as top leaders of bakery associations from Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Cambodia.
The most exciting part of Bakery Fair is the much-awaited “Bakers Cup Wedding Cake Competition 2023,” which showcases exceptional and artistic wedding cake creations based on its theme, “Kasalang Pinoy.”
Among the 40 participants, which included nationalities such as Chinese and Korean professional bakers from different baking companies, Filipino Chef Perie Cudanin was declared champion and received a cash prize of PHP 80,000, together with a gold championship trophy.
Perie shared that he spent three weeks perfecting his cake entry; he was very thorough with each detail, especially with the fondant, firmness of the royal icing, gum paste for flowers, wood and dowel for the base, as well as hardened rice paper for the Capiz-inspired design.
His six-foot-tall cake creation actually garnered the most attention and praise from the majority of onlookers, given that his winning wedding cake successfully mirrored the Filipino culture.
According to him, he just incorporated the ancient traditions and values embedded in Filipino courtship, with “harana” as one of the most important concepts.
Chef Perie used to work as a pastry chef in a prestigious hotel in Saudi Arabia and decided to pursue online cake selling in the Philippines, eventually establishing his own bakehouse.
Photo Credit:
https://www.facebook.com/perie.cudanin
