Miami Dade College Turns 60, Celebrates With Cake Challenge And 'I Am MDC Day'

MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- It's a party in the 305 for MDC. Miami Dade College is marking its 60th birthday.

MDC is the largest public educational institution in the country and the Miami-Dade College Foundation is bringing the two million plus alums together, through social media with 'I Am MDC Day', to celebrate.

With so many MDC shark alumni out there, what better way to mark a milestone than with a sweet competition.

They started a cake challenge in 2018 as a way to connect alumni, and this year the college's provost, Dr. Lenore Rodicio kicked it off with her own silver cake and message on their Instagram page.

"I am here to challenge you to an MDC birthday cake bake off. I'm not going to compete, but I'm going to set the bar with my very own MDC cake."

Anyone can enter, one per household: just bake a cake, decorate it, and share it on social media. Judging will be based on creativity, design, and MDC spirit. It may not be 'Cake Wars' but there's some stiff competition out there.  Like MDC culinary student Tamara Vedrine.

"I love making cakes, I've been making cakes since I was 12 years old. My mom taught me how to make cakes and then from there I just started growing my experience with baking cakes from scratch and then from there learning how to design the icing."

This is the third year for the cake challenge. Whipping up the winning cake last year was just what these entrepreneurial sisters Marlen and Diana Suriel needed to upstart their own baking business.

We started baking doing cookies, cakes a little bit of dessert, and our family and friends told us 'Oh you need to make this as a business, you are doing this so great, the decoration is pretty'and that's how everything came out," explained Marlen Suriel.

"We entered the challenge and that gave us a push," said Diana Suriel. "You can see the love of the MDC crew and faculty about the cake (on social media), that was our biggest prize."

You can check out their business Magardinias, Inc. on Instagram.

Vedrine has her eyes on the prize this year. She's working to become a pastry chef and gave us a little intel on her cake entry.

"I'm adding fruit filling inside the number cake, some 'Tamara spin' to the cake," she divulges.

The winner gets some sweet MDC swag, bragging rights and gets to judge the next year.

If you want in on the action, the cake judging takes place Sunday, September 6 so get baking.

Click here for more details on the cake challenge and Happy birthday MDC!