Our Story

Makes-Me-Wanna SHOUT! Baking Challenge is bringing restaurants, bakers, and people into a community around food.

This is the event where everyone can have their cake (or another favorite signature dessert) and eat it too. Local home bakers prove that the art of and love for baking good cakes from scratch is not just a thing of the past.  A restaurant gets a best selling dessert.  A local non-profit gets support and attention for the programs and services they provide that bring comfort to people in crisis.  A winning baker’s  story  goes viral.  Everybody wins!

In 2011 the Michon Boston Group Ltd‘s Church Lady Cake Diaries digital media project launched the Makes-Me-Wanna SHOUT! Coconut Cake Challenge, the first amateur baking contest in the Washington metro area to feature its winning cake on the menu of an acclaimed restaurant, Eatonville Restaurant (co-presenter of the challenge).

 

Our grand prize winner, Decoyise Brown, a downtown law firm receptionist from Waldorf, MD would not have entered the contest had it not been for her best friend who picked up an entry form with the full belief that Decoyise had the winning cake.  Decoyise won the taste buds of the public tasters at the semifinals held at Miriam’s Kitchen (the 2011 beneficiary), and the official judges in the final five round. Among the official judges for the contest were James Beard Award winner Joan Nathan, cookbook author Brenda Rhodes Miller, “Capital Cooking” host Lauren DeSantis, and Eatonville Restaurant owner Andy Shallal, and Garrett Fleming (current executive chef at Lincoln Restaurant).

Martha’s Table is the  beneficiary for the 2012 Makes-Me-Wanna SHOUT! Chocolate Layer Cake Baking Challenge and host of the semifinals in March 2012.  The 2012 Finals will be held at Eatonville Restaurant in April.

The Makes-Me-Wanna SHOUT! Baking Challenge aims to extend its mission to building community around food in more cities and communities in the U.S.