Promising pastry artist Daischiell Cledera bagged the Gold Award in the Sculpted Cake Category of the recently concluded Cake Fiesta Manila for her life-size Beetlejuice masterpiece.

Held at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City, the pioneering international cake show in the Philippines gathered sterling pastry chefs in a three-day convention of a series of demos and workshops, various displays and live competitions.





A culinary graduate from the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institution Management (SHRIM), Cledera relived and transformed Betelgeuse, the iconic the trickster ghost from Tim Burton’s movie “Beetlejuice” (1988), into an artwork that gave a nod to one of the most remarkable scenes from the film — the mischievous bio-exorcist appearing from underneath fake grass.

Cledera’s creation was made of chiffon cake for the head and torso and rice krispies for the arms, which were then coated with ganache, white modelling chocolate, and fondant.

While the grass was actually cake-filled ice cream cones covered in white modeling chocolate, the Handbook for the Recently Deceased was of rice krispies with pages created from wafer papers and white chocolate.

As an apprentice, Cledera underwent an extensive training at the Pastry Shop of The

Greenbrier in West Virginia, USA and worked as a pastry chef and food consultant for MZ Projects headed by celebrity chef Mikel Zaguirre.

For further studies, she pursued The Art of International Bread Baking at The International Culinary Center in New York where she finished on top of her class.