Meet Mike Elder, the next big TV culinary star

​Ten years ago, you were much more likely to see Kansas City native Mike Elder -- a Chevrolet-certified auto mechanic -- working on an car engine than fussing with the details of a cake.

But that was ten years ago. Since then, it's cakes, not cars, that dominate Elder's life. You can see for yourself this Monday, August 31 at 9 p.m. on the TLC series The Ultimate Cake-Off. Mike and his mom -- who co-own Cakes by Cheri & Mike in Clinton, Missouri (although Elder says that "99 percent of our business comes from Kansas City") -- will compete with two other culinary contestants in a challenge to create an "edible masterpiece." The winner of the segment -- and Elder won't reveal who it is -- received $10,000.

How did Elder jump from automobiles to pastry? "Well, I was always the one drafted to help out my Mom when she started her baking business. She baked cakes in the basement of our house. My sisters weren't that interested," said Mike, who graduated from Hickman Mills High School in 1992 and moved to Clinton a decade later to work with both his mother and his father Larry, who owns an automobile restoration company. But Mike discovered a particular passion for pastry: sculptural cakes. His gift has made him kind of famous, in the Midwest anyway.

 In the last few years, Elder has designed and created cakes shaped like a NASCAR race truck, kegs of beer, wine barrels, even a toilet: "It was a groom's cake for a client whose family operated a janitorial service," Elder said. His reputation for creating these edible sculptures reached the producers of TLC's Ultimate Cake-Off -- Mike Elder says they invited him to participate in the competition held last June 26th in Long Beach, California. "We shipped out about half of the equipment we have in our bakery," Mike said.

That was a good thing, since the rules for that particular competition were demanding, to say the least. "That's what made it so stressful," Mike recalled. "We had nine hours from the time we met with the client -- The Pirate Invasion Faire & Festival in Long Beach -- to the judging of the cakes. Before we could start baking anything, we had to follow all the crazy rules."

The rules required that the cake must be 5-feet in height, must contain mechanical parts and lights, if possible. It required that power tools be used on the cake. "Luckily, we brought a lot of stuff," Mike said. "Our cake is radio-controlled."

You can see the three finished cakes, including the big winner, on the Ultimate Cake-Off on Monday night. The Elder family will be watching; they already know who won, but they're keeping their lips sealed.

And even though I think I've figured it all out, so am I!