During the contest, pre-registered teams made up of members from neighbouring fair-boards and a number of representatives of various community organizations will be tasked to decorate the cake to the best of their abilities, according to the Shawville Fair’s Vice-President Erin Dittburner.

Teams will consist of two to four people and the contest may hold up to 20 teams.

In a race against the clock, each team will be provided a cake along with a variety of decorating accessories. Adding a little difficulty and excitement to the challenge, teams will be assigned a mystery item to use and a random theme to follow.

“There’s obviously going to be some challenges for them,” she said. “It’s not going to be straight, easy decorating to make it a little fun and interesting.”

“The mystery item may or may not go with the theme,” she added. “Just depending on the luck of the draw.”

Contestants will be judged by best representation of their respective themes and best use of their mystery item which will be revealed when teams are assigned their themes.

The fair’s mascot Buttercup will also be in attendance hyping up the show, cheering on the teams and bringing plenty of excitement to the spectators and those stopping by.

At the end of the event, all the cakes will be auctioned off to the public and the money raised will be donated to the Shawville Lions Club to pay for a new elevator in their facility, Dittburner said.

“We thought this would be a good way to get an early kick into the pot,” she said.

A spin on an old tradition, the cake-decorating competition was inspired by an old event that used to involve a number of fair-board representatives from back in the day.

According to the Shawville Fair’s Vice-President Erin Dittburner, the Ottawa Valley fair boards are a very tight-knit community that cooperate on many fronts including volunteering for each other’s carnivals when needed.

Over a decade ago, in an event called the fair board Olympics, members from respective Ottawa Valley fair boards used form teams and compete in a series of challenges to see which fair-board stood as the very best. One of those events was a cake decorating contest.

And with reality-TV and cooking shows being so popular, bringing the contest back to life felt like the right things to do. With the Shawville Fair coming up there’s no better place to do it than at the most Family Friendly Fair in the Valley, Dittburner said.

“There was a group of us sitting around and chatting one day and we thought that it would be really fun to bring that back.”

As part of the carnival’s opening on Thursday night, the event will take place inside the arena and folks are invited to stop by, cheer on the participating teams of dessert designers and help raise funds for a good cause.

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