I've got my game face on. I'm playing a long game here. I've got to plan, to prep, to buy cake stuff for a competition. I give good cake. I am a dab hand with a piping bag. For goodness sake I got through to the auditions of the Great British Bake Off but it seems easy when compared to the down and dirty face off at the St Anne's Fundraising Cake Sale and Bake Off, Saturday 23 April, 10.30am -1pm, for the Tin Annie appeal.
It's all very well baking for the Silver Fox, Mrs Berry and competing against strangers, I know personally the people I'm up against in this one and they are good. Very good.
Bake off competitions, the small ones not run by the baking nazis at the WI, tend to be all about looks, as is so much in this world. So long as you haven't subbed salt for sugar and used a recipe you are familiar with, you can pretty much guarantee the cake will taste OK. All that palaver about getting the flavour balance right is a sneaky way of saying you don't like their cake without actually having to say 'I don't like your cake' to someone's face. Judges in little cake competitions tend to be respected members of the community, people who would probably rather cut off their own little toe rather than judge between cakes baked by people they know. They are judges who probably couldn't tell you if your passion fruit was over powering or the sugar in your Italian meringue icing hadn't caramelised if their lives depended on it. So they use the only sense they can trust, the only yardstick they can reliably agree on, their eyes and the look of the beast.
Looks are everything in cake contests. Like Donald Trump at a rally it's all glitter and frosting with some crowd pleasing cake-bites but little actual substance. You can win them with a fairly average sponge but if it looks like the Christmas fairy has barfed glitter onto your icing you are probably on for a winner. Make it big, use icing in acid bright psychedelic colours, turn it into a construction project with rotating bits, pillars and an impressive castellated roof line and victory can be yours.
Insight is important. Does the vicar like Star Wars? Is there a secret stash of My Little Ponies in the living room of the woman from the Mother's Union? Does one or any of them hate fondant icing? So as well as getting my stuff together, my spies will be out watching to see who likes marzipan and who leaves the icing from the birthday cake on the side of their plate. Knowledge is power and victory will be mine!
kianamaiart
gummygunk
origamiaround
