What could an artist, sculptor and baker have in common? At the recently-concluded International Cake Show Australia 2026, Anna Austin, Arati Mirji and Samie Ramachandran from Bengaluru won the World’s Best Extreme Cake Sculptors title, placing first among contestants from Australia, Japan, and Taiwan.
Team India’s winning entry was a jallikattu bull and tamer, based on the theme of Adventure and the trio had to sculpt a piece within a 12-hour time period, over two days. The cake show was hosted by the Australian Cake Artists & Decorators Association (ACADA).
While cake is a sweet something to enjoy or mark an occasion for most of us, Anna, Arati and Samie view it as their canvas. As a cake artist, Anna had interacted with Arati, a sugar flower artist, and Samie, a cake-and-sugar sculptor, so often over the past 12 years that they had forged a friendship.
Anna, founder of Cake Canvas, believed each member of Team India possessed a specific set of skills that could win them the title. While she had established a name for herself as a creator of life-size, life-like edible scultures, Arati was known for crafting sugar flowers that could fool the bees and Samie had mastered the art of sculpting cakes that could go up to 24 feet.
“Each of us had become proficient in our own set of skills and were regularly invited to teach at the same workshops and classes. Though we’ve known each other for more than a decade, this was the first time we were working on a project together,” says Samie, founder and director of Sugar Sculpt Academy.
“When the competition was announced I was sure the three of us stood a winning chance,” says Anna, adding, “The theme was chosen by reigning champions, Team Australia and our application was among the first to be selected.”
Gearing up
The team held two trial runs in India before they left for Queensland, the contest’s venue in Australia. “We had nine months to chart out our plan of action — from what we would be creating to our individual roles in bringing it together,” says Arati, a world renown sugar flower artist, who partnered with Italian brand Saracino, to create Saracino’s Flower Paste by Arati Mirji.
Team India’s piece underway at ACADA 2026
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Special Arrangement
Anna continues, “We had decided our roles based on our strengths — I would work on the faces and legs of both the figures and Samie would do the bodies. Arati was in charge of the fine detailing of bells, flowers and colours.”
“We had to translate a high-energy sporting movement into cake,” Arati says, adding the contest had specifications; the figurine had to be approximately 1.5 metres in height, comprising at least two-thirds edible material. “We got more points if we increased that ratio,” Arati says.
Organisers bake cake slabs as per participant requirement and provide them at the competition venue, while teams are allowed to carry the structure or frame on which they would fashion their piece. Everything else had to be crafted at the venue.
According to Samie, the team faced three, huge challenges. “We were planning to create two figures when our competitors would be perfecting just one. Second, we would be using material from brands different from those available in India, which could take some adjustment. And finally, it was winter there and the chocolate was hardening faster than we expected.”
“Moulding the chocolate to make it pliable took quite a bit of our time, and we had to tweak our plan for the second day so we didn’t fall behind,” says Anna.
Good old-fashioned, Indian jugaad also came in handy, adds Arati, who says the team used paint rollers instead of airbrushes over the figurines.
Team India at work at ACADA 2026
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Special Arrangement
They admit the thought of working in front of a live audience was daunting, but, “once we began, the audience ceased to exist. Each of us knew what we had to do and we went ahead doing just that. There was no room for mistakes,” says Anna.
“We worked seamlessly and in sync. There was no confusion or extra chatter and we finished with 30 minutes to spare,” says Arati.
Team India utilised around 15 kilos of rice crispies and marshmallows each, 60 kilos of modelling chocolate and 20 kilos of white chocolate ganache, apart from edible colour, decorative supplies, flower paste, cocoa butter and other material.
Looking back
Samie says entering a competition was not on his bucket list, but when Anna brought up the idea, the thought of engaging “with the best as well as the reigning champions” piqued his interest. “Our submission was really good, but having been a judge of contests myself, I knew the parameters used to assess entries are different from what participants perceive.”
The team recalled the challenges they faced — from landing sponsors to transporting the structure across the sea and working with new material — all of which paled in comparison with their win.
Arati Mirji, Anna Austin and Samie Ramachandran with their prize-winning entry at ACADA 2026
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Special Arrangement
Arati says her journey as a baker, let alone a sugar flower artist, was quite accidental. “At a friend’s home, we were served cake she had just pulled out of the oven. The entire experience was simple and yet so enjoyable — that we could share something so wholesome that was prepared at home made me want to bake too.”
She enrolled at a culinary academy to learn and at the time, sugar flowers were not yet making waves. “Most of the tools were not available in India at the time, but after attending a basic course I was hooked,” she says, adding she went online and taught herself.
“Suger flowers have to be assembled one petal at a time and need to be kept dry at all times; humidity or moisture ruin them. Generally, a single showpiece has 12 varieties of flowers and takes about a month and half to create if you work six hours a day,” she says, which makes their feat at ACADA all the more remarkable.
For Samie, transporting the main frame was a challenge. “Though it was a plus for the team to be able to carry the structure, the fact that we were baking the rest from scratch was intense. That we were crafting two figures meant our time was essentially halved which only added to our task.”
“I felt the Australian entry with an underwater theme was really good, but I suppose we had the edge with more complex characters,” he says.
For Anna, with an MfA degree from Kochi, cakes were “a change of medium to an edible format”. She started creating realistic figurines in 2012 and by 2014, was gaining recognition for her craft with international awards.
Now, she says, the challenge is to defend their title. ACADA has announced that Team India has automatically qualified for the 2027 International Cake-Off Championships to be be held in July and August next year.
