From a distance, Jalene Stradling’s cake looked like a stack of newspapers tied together with blue-and-white string.
The pages appeared slightly worn and curled at the edges, with a familiar Arizona Daily Star front page resting on top. Its main headline read: “Local Mom/Grandma Triumphs Over Cancer After Unimaginable Loss.”
But every part of the newspaper was edible, and the woman pictured on the front page was Stradling’s personal hero: her mother, Judy Boren.
Stradling, a cake decorator at the Fry’s Food Store in Gladden Farms, created the cake while representing the Fry’s division at the National Kroger Cake Challenge in Cincinnati earlier this month.
Held Aug. 3-7 at Kroger’s corporate headquarters, the weeklong competition brought together 21 cake decorators from Kroger divisions across the country. The decorators were divided into four teams and made seven cakes throughout the week through a mix of individual and team challenges.
For one challenge, titled “Beyond the Image,” contestants had two hours to create a cake that told a story about their personal hero while incorporating an edible image into the design.
Stradling said she immediately knew she wanted to honor her mother.
Boren was diagnosed with stage 3C uterine cancer in October 2024. In the middle of her treatment, Boren’s husband, Stradling’s father, died after suffering a stroke.
Stradling wanted the cake to tell the story of her mother’s strength, but she struggled to find a design that felt meaningful enough.
Jalene Stradling, recreates the cake she made to win first place in the Beyond the Image award in the Kroger Cake Challenge decorating contest. Stradling works at the Fry’s Supermarket at 11350 W. Tangerine Rd in Marana, Ariz. on August 26, 2026. The theme was to showcase a personal hero and Stradling chose to honor her mother with a newspaper article.
Then, around midnight before the challenge, an idea came to her: She would turn her mother’s story into front-page news.
“I didn’t know exactly how it was going to turn out or how I could make my vision come to life, but I did my best to write my story and incorporate my beautiful mother into the image/story,” Stradling wrote in an email to the Arizona Daily Star.
Using her graphic design skills, Stradling created a newspaper page featuring a portrait of Boren alongside an article about her cancer journey and the loss of her husband. She also added a Fry’s advertisement and a banner announcing her advancement to the national competition.
At first, Stradling had only planned to make a general newspaper. But as she worked on the design late into the night, she decided it needed to represent the place she calls home.
“This is where the Arizona Daily Star popped into my brain and I went running with it to make my own front page newspaper,” she wrote.
Stradling has lived in Marana since 2002.
The finished marble cake with vanilla buttercream was designed to resemble several folded newspapers stacked on top of one another. Stradling printed the front page on an edible sugar sheet and used wafer paper along the sides to resemble individual pages. She then airbrushed the cake to replace its bright white color with the aged appearance of newsprint.
Blue-and-white vanilla buttercream crossed over the top like string. Stradling added the detail at the last minute after learning the cake needed to include a handwritten message. She incorporated the message on a fondant delivery tag labeled “Boren Residence,” completing the illusion of a stack of newspapers tied together for delivery.
As she decorated the original cake, Stradling said she cried for about two hours while thinking about eventually showing it to her mother.
Boren had no idea her daughter was creating a cake about her.
The cake also attracted attention from Kroger executives and bakery vendors walking through the competition. Stradling said several initially mistook the edible front page for a real copy of the newspaper and wondered how she had obtained it in time to turn it into a cake.
“I was so proud to tell them that no, this isn’t a real published article, but that it is a real newspaper in Tucson, Arizona, and it is a real story about my mom,” she wrote.
Stradling’s newspaper cake earned first place in the Beyond the Image challenge. She received a patch for her competition jacket recognizing the win.
Although she did not win the overall competition, Stradling was also one of two competitors to receive the Decorator Uplift Award. Her fellow decorators selected her for the honor, which recognizes competitors who demonstrate teamwork, encouragement and professionalism while sharing their knowledge and helping others succeed.
Her trip to Cincinnati followed months of competition.
The contest began in February, when decorators received details about the first round. Stradling created a quarter-sheet cake and submitted photographs of it to her district leader.
Her cake was then selected to advance to a Fry’s company-wide competition in Phoenix on April 30, where she competed against seven other decorators.
Stradling won the Phoenix competition and was named the Fry’s division’s top cake decorator, earning her place at the National Kroger Cake Challenge in Cincinnati.
Stradling began working at the Gladden Farms Fry’s when the store opened about two years ago, but cake decorating was already part of her family history. Her grandmother was a wedding cake decorator.
Now, Stradling gets to contribute to other families’ celebrations through her work.
“It’s exciting to be part of someone’s special day,” she said.
Jalene Stradling, uses an airbrush as she recreates the cake she made to win first place in the Beyond the Image award in the Kroger Cake Challenge.
On Wednesday, Stradling recreated the newspaper cake at the Gladden Farms store as an internal Fry’s photography team filmed her work.
This time, her mother was there to watch.
Boren had only seen photographs of the original cake after the competition. As Stradling recreated its newspaper pages and personal front-page story Wednesday, Boren saw the tribute in person for the first time.
Both mother and daughter became emotional as they talked about the cake and the story behind it, wiping away tears as they posed for a picture together.
