Hawk and Kane represent Eatonton in the Wedding Cake Championship

Viki Kane and Reva Hawk, the pair behind Merci Beaucoup situated right in Eatonton, are up for the Wedding Cake Championship, hosted by Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski on Food Network premiering Monday, June 25 at 9 p.m., in which they will compete for the title of Wedding Cake Champion.

“My friend and assistant, Viki Kane and I, are so excited to be a part of Wedding Cake Championship to show everyone that a wedding cake shouldn’t just be an afterthought, it should be part of the main event,” Hawk said. “Over the past few years the wedding cake has been replaced with doughnut walls, cupcakes towers, pies tables, but it is time for the wedding cake to take center stage once more!”

The award winning custom cake company, Merci Beaucoup in Eatonton, was started by Hawk in 2002 in California. Kane received her culinary education from Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena and Hawk is a graduate of California Academy in San Francisco. Hawk was also apart of the show Amazing Wedding Cakes, which aired globally in many other countries, so the duo is well prepared for the challenge, yet they remain humble.

“It was an amazing honor to be chosen among the best of the best in the cake industry to compete for the title of Wedding Cake Champion and for a chance at the prize money,” Hawk said. “Just to be considered out of so many cake artists from around the country was a proud moment.”

Hawk and Kane decided to move the cake business all the way from California to Middle Georgia, because Hawk wanted to be with her family. She is becoming known as The Cake Lady of the Lake.

“People wonder why I moved my business from California to Middle Georgia and the answer is pretty easy, for family,” Hawk said. “I wanted to be closer to my parents after they retired to Lake Country. I am fortunate that people celebrate birthdays and weddings everywhere, so I travel a lot creating cakes all over the country and I call Eatonton my home.”

Wedding Cake Championship will have five other duos besides Hawk and Kane. The pair will get to show off their baking skills as they go through two rounds of challenges. For more information on Merci Beaucoup, please visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MerciCakes/.

“The biggest challenge will be having to work outdoors in highly unpredictable weather conditions,” Kane said. “In the real world, we work in climate controlled environments, where we don’t have to worry about wind, bugs, temperature, and unfamiliar equipment.”

One of the first challenges they will have to face is wedding cake toppers, where one team will earn an advantage in the next round, where they will have to design a personalized wedding cake for a couple.

Hawk said this will be a real challenge for her and Kane, because they spend lots of time planning out with their clients in advance. The time they will have to plan will be drastically cut.

“We will only have minutes to decide what to create for them and then only a few hours to make it come to life, this is a process that normally takes four days. Then we will be baking in a kitchen that is not familiar to us. That may be the scariest part of it all, not knowing where everything is,” Hawk said.

Each week on the show the action will build up until the grand finale, when there will be just three teams remaining in the competition. The teams must create a fabulous cake to impress Tara Lipinski, and husband Todd Kapostasy, for their wedding anniversary.

The team that wins this challenge will get the $25,000 grand prize and the title of Wedding Cake Champion. The duo of Merci Beaucoup has big plans if they win this competition.

“We know that we can create amazing cakes and that we are really good at what we do, but to win would validate us and all the years we have spent learning our craft,” Hawk said. “Also we would love to bring home the prize money! If we take home the $25,000 I plan to reinvest it back into the growth of my business and also take a trip or two.”

Story By Alaina Minshew