World Pastry Team Championship | Red Rock Resort | July 9, 2012 | 12:50 P.M.

It’s called the World Pastry Team Championship, but it’s really a competition of food sculptures. These are fantastic works of edible art, mostly made of chocolate and sugar, and very delicate. In this photo, Team USA works on its pieces, but there were also teams from Japan, South Korea, China, the Netherlands and Mexico. All of them worked for 13 hours over two days to build two pieces. Toward the end of the time limit, the announcer counted down. First, “One more hour to go.” Then, “30 minutes left.” Soon he was counting off the minutes until time expired, but that wasn’t the end. The teams also had to move the fragile pieces from their work areas to a judging table. This was the high drama of the event. Unfortunately for the South Korean team, the top of their chocolate sculpture fell off in the kitchen as they started to move it. Their sugar sculpture made it to the judging table but later collapsed. I felt genuinely sad for them.