Have your cake and eat Freo too at this sweet design event

An event looking at Fremantle through the lens of sponge cake, jelly, and plenty of icing has encouraged people to see, and taste, the city differently.

Cakemantle, an event held as part of Fremantle Design Week, was the brainchild of designers Loren Holmes and Rosie Halsmith, who invited the public to both make and come and taste dessert creations inspired by the port city.

The organisers didn't give any guidance to the bakers other than that the cakes "had to be edible and they had to be able to talk about why they chose that place", Ms Holmes said.

Sixteen entrants rose to the challenge, some professional designers, others locals who were inspired to say something about Freo.

The result was a rich tapestry of the city. Some entrants made recognisable interpretations of well-known landmarks like Monument Hill, the (car carrier ship) Wallenius Wilhelmsen and the old Roundhouse prison.

Others explored the city in time, one re-imagining the rocky bar at the river mouth that was removed to create Fremantle Harbour as a shipping port, another imagined the city several hundred years in the future, after the seas have risen and fallen.

One family effort, featuring two small white figures lying on a slab under a pitched canopy, shared a little-known slice of history.

"It's a reference to the morgue that used to be at Bathers Beach," maker Vanessa said.

"It's a bit of a play on words with the slab, like a slab of cake and also the slab where the bodies used to be.

"That was where we got our inspiration from, and we kind of liked the idea because it's a place we all go to often, but a lot of people don't know all the history and stories."

Another entrant, produced by members of a Perth landscape design studio, painstakingly used cheesecake, jelly, cake and local bush ingredients to recreate pieces of terrazzo tile, produced by Italian immigrants Giuseppe and Anna Scolaro at their Fremantle factory.

The cake was instantly recognisable as terrazzo tile that was a popular feature of many buildings from the 1950s until the 70s, and which is now experiencing a resurgence in popularity.

But before the crowd, who had reserved eating tickets to the event, could conduct a taste test, there was a competition to run.

Three judges, executive chef Blaze Young, landscape architect Scott Lang and UWA dean of design Sarah McGann, were asked to judge the entries on three criteria — taste, idea and execution.

It proved a tough task, Scott Lang said, not just because it involved sampling 16 pieces of cake but because the concepts were highly original.

"It was actually super tough," he said.

"The ideas that people have come up with and the way they were thinking about Fremantle was pretty amazing and the execution of how they were representing those ideas.

"For me it was the ones that could really come up with a very clear and simple, strong idea about what is special about Fremantle, that's what I was most impressed by."

When the votes were tallied, third place went to a cake called the Fremantle Doctor, a rendering of the afternoon sea breeze in human form, with a flowing blue beard, which judge Blaze Young praised as having a "beautiful balance of flavours".

In second place was the Scolaro Terrazzo tiles creation, which was singled out for its design and execution.

In first place was Erin Coates, who reimagined the former limestone rock bar at the mouth of the Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River, which the judges praised for its exceptional taste.

"As soon as we tasted it, it was really the flavour that pushed it over the edge," Mr Young said.

"I think I would be quite proud to put something like this on the menu at my restaurant."

Ms Coates was delighted.

"I'm so thrilled because I'm not really much of a baker," Ms Coates said after the announcement.

"The cake is based on my interest in the geology and the habitats underneath the surface of the river.

"I dive quite a lot and I free-dive a lot in the river and looked at the changing ecology there and this cake is a re-imagining of that space if C.Y. O'Connor hadn't removed the rock bar at the mouth of the river."

After the awards were given out, it was time for eating.

Ms Holmes said given how quickly tickets sold out, both to people wanting to bake and those wanting to eat, the organisers were hoping to bring the event back next year.

"We think that there might be more. I think given the popularity of this one, we reckon it might be a recurring event in the Fremantle Design Week calendar."