Naperville’s DeEtta’s Bakery Places Second at Las Vegas Cake Decorating Competition

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This past weekend, the DeEtta’s decorating duo of Alexa Abaroa and Julie Thompson finished runners up at the 21st annual Pillsbury Bakers’ Plus Creative Decorating Competition in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Abaroa is the lead cake director at DeEtta’s Bakery, located at 428 W. 5th Ave in Naperville. She was excited to team up with Thompson in Las Vegas, and meet some top talents in the world of cake decorating. 

“It was a great learning experience,” said Abaroa. “It was cool to compete with other great decorators and get critiques from professional people in our industry.”

Six international teams decorated four separate cakes during the two-day competition. The duos had six hours to complete decorations on both of their cakes. On day one, each group was tasked with decorating a wedding cake and “King of England” cake, which was revealed as the mystery theme shortly before the beginning of the competition. DeEtta’s “King of England” cake took home a first place medal, while the wedding cake placed second.

During day two, the decorating categories were a sculpted hyper realistic cake and a buttercream cake. Though DeEtta’s did not place for their buttercream cake, they received a gold medal for their sculpted hyper realistic cake. Abaroa and Thompson created a cake depicting a boiling pot on top of an induction burner with realistic food on the side.

Now that she’s had a taste of the competition, Abaroa is open to competing in the future for DeEtta’s, as she hopes to bring some more hardware back to the Naperville Bakery

“We’re definitely down to see if we can win more trophies,” said Abaroa. “It’s super fun competing in something we all love to do, which is to decorate cakes. I’m really proud of me and Julie, we did really a great job, we executed all of our cakes and we came home with some wins.”

Naperville News 17’s Will Payne reports. 

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