Pastry chefs make pastry work "Beauty and the Beast" in Istanbul, Turkey, March 10, 2018. Pastry festival in Istanbul has displayed a colorful world of pastries and cakes, mostly in the forms of human figures, animals, flowers, and social lives. (Xinhua/He Canling)
ISTANBUL, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Pastry festival in Istanbul has displayed a colorful world of pastries and cakes, mostly in the forms of human figures, animals, flowers, and social lives.
They are works of pastry chefs from 40 countries who are attending Master of Cake pastry festival in Istanbul, a two-day event that ends on Sunday evening, and all the pieces are edible.
With wild imagination and deft hands, the chefs turned pastries into impressive artistic pieces, from busts of different figures to images of monsters, lovely little elephants and two flying eagles sharing a fish.
The iconic Trevi Fountain in Rome is here, and there is a soldier driving two monsters toward a prisoner chained to a stone pole, and a mounted general fighting hard against enemies.
In a small workshop, pastry chefs are doing their jobs. In front of a house, an old man was cutting firewood, while his wife with apron on was greeting him.
In a market with different kinds of vegetables and fruits, about three dozens of traders and customers were busy with business, no different from real life in all aspects.
Eda Dartepe is the maker of "Flowers in the vase." It took her three weeks to present such a visual feast featuring long-stem peonies, roses and chrysanthemum with fresh foliage.
"I worked day and night to make every single detail truthful," she told Xinhua.
Yasemin Benli joined the contest for top-rate cake by making a traditional Turkish dessert known as baklava. "It is a special dessert having numerous shapes, sizes and flavors," she explained.
Baklava mainly consists of 35 layers of phyllo dough and is stacked and brushed with butter and sugar syrup, and then cut into rectangles. Walnut or pistachio nuts can be used interchangeably.
According to elderly Turks, it takes years to learn how to make baklava.
Among the works that drew the attention are miniatures of well-known art pieces and architectural masterpieces as well as protagonists from movies like The Little Prince, Finding Nemo and Beauty and the Beast.
Daniel Dieguez from Spain was working on life-size Beauty and the Beast with Turkey's distinguished chef Tugba Gecgil in front of visitors for them to monitor every step of making such an installation.
"We have been working on this real-size installation, made of chocolate and dough with cherry syrup, since last week," Dieguez told Xinhua.
For Turks, pastries are an indispensable part of their daily lives.
"This passion of Turkish people dated back to the Ottoman era, which was famous for its rich and creamy desserts," said Ayse Celem, the owner of a small coffeehouse in Istanbul.
The winner of the pastry contest is set to be announced on Sunday evening and awarded a prize of 2,000 U.S. dollars.
