Planning a national convention for thousands of attendees is no piece of cake—especially if it’s the annual meeting of the International Cake Exploration Society (ICES). The group, which describes itself as “dedicated to the advancement of the sugar arts,” is made up of more than 3,000 cake decorators from around the world.
Last summer, ICES held its annual convention in Omaha, taking over most of Qwest Center, the city’s gleaming $291 million convention facility.
For four days, Qwest was a giant house of cake. ICES members from across the globe came together to create what they like to call “sugar art”—elaborate multilayer specialty cakes. There were 600 cakes on display at the convention, and not an angel food cake in the bunch. It was more like rolled butter-cream, royal-icing gingerbread and chocolate-tempered cookie dough cake with spatula sculpting.
Overseeing the house of cake was Linda Fontana, a buyer in the cake decorating department of Mangelsen’s, an Omaha-based craft and event supply store, and herself a member of ICES. Fontana was co-chair of this year’s convention, responsible for making sure all that sugar didn’t melt. And that was definitely not a piece of cake.
“At our conventions, we always have to keep the humidity down in the rooms because of the cakes,” Fontana explains. “That can be hard when you hold your convention in the middle of the summer.”
To make matters worse, Omaha was hit by a regional blackout just before the ICES convention opened. Power was restored by the time the first guests arrived, but Qwest Center facility managers scrambled to keep the building cool and the humidity low.
“After the blackout, the Qwest Center had to play catch-up with a lot of things, but they did a really great job,” Fontana says. “We had a few flowers wilt on us, but only the cake decorators knew.”
The four-day convention drew more than 1,200 people, including suppliers for a trade show and a substantial international contingent from countries such as England, France, South Africa, and Sri Lanka—an opportunity for Omaha to show itself to the world.
“For a lot of people, this was their first time to Omaha,” Fontana says. “I think some people expected there would still be cowboys and Indians running around town. So it was nice that they came away really impressed with Omaha, how much there was to do in town, and the friendliness of Midwesterners.”
You might think that they’d serve cake for dessert at an ICES event, but this is one group that prefers to have its cake rather than eat it.
“It’s funny, we tend to shy away from serving cake at our banquets,” Fontana says. “This year we served an Italian butterscotch tort.”
