It has been a very busy month for me with sorting and naming school uniforms, fulfilling customer cake orders and most weekends spent judging. From Horticultural Societies to the Great Horsham Bake off to my local village church fete this weekend. Never have I been faced with so many delights and difficult decisions to make! I have been so impressed with the number of local people that are baking for their families and clearly have a natural flare to do so. I have seen many of my friends on social media sites proudly posting photo’s of their family bakes and my frustrated response to their posts is ‘Why oh why didn’t you enter??’. All judging is done blind after all, it’s a bit of fun and gives us judges more to taste!
I have tasted some unusual cakes from Marmite and chocolate cheese, beetroot to ‘a number of traditional Victoria sponges, carrot cakes and chocolate delights, all of which worked incredibly well.
One particular event that I attended, I walked into the room and nearly passed out at the number of cakes on display. Thinking ‘surely I am not expected to taste all of these??!!’ I quickly made a call to my Mum, who has also tasted a number of cakes over the years, only to be told ‘sorry, I am just on my way out, did you need me for something?’ ahhh!
At this particular event, I was amazed by the number of colourful home grown produce on display and remember thinking to myself ‘I can never seem to grow anything’. This however has made me determined to have a go next year at maybe growing at least some raspberries as I seemed to have made a lot of white chocolate raspberry cake this summer. Then maybe I could have a go at my own carrots and beetroot? I cannot guarantee that any of my produce would with first place in a competition but it’s all about having a go.
I hear so many people say that they can’t bake and I used to just laugh but now I’d say, have a go, practice, make it fun and get your family involved and if it all goes wrong, make sure you have some custard in the cupboard!! Practice makes perfect after all.