Sunday was the big day. I’ll spare you the suspense: I didn’t win a ribbon. Except for maybe first place for Most Embarrassed Parent Ever.
I’ve been working on the bacon-chocolate cookie recipe for a while now. For the past two weeks I took in samples to the office and subjected co-workers to my experiments. I think I got it down just right in the last batch – a good mix of super-crunchy bacon with a moist chewy chocolate cookie that got the salty-sweet thing well-balanced.
The name? Depending on the audience they are Pigs in the Mud or they are BacOMGs. The name “BaConfections” was also suggested, but unfortunately when you say that out loud it sounds too much like “Bake Infections,” and what with swine flu and all, that was just sort of ew.
So I figured I had a decent submission for the chocolate bake-off. It tasted good, it had good texture, it was reasonably creative. And chocolate-y, dear lord, yes. 28 oz of chocolate, plus another half-cup of unsweetened cocoa.
Now mind you, the last time I entered a baking contest, I was 22. I entered a contest looking for lemon submissions that required a whole dessert plus one serving plated. I entered something called sunny-side-up cake, which was basically angel-food cake with a hole hacked out of the center and replaced with lemon custard. That lost too. At least partly because it never occurred to me that you’d just hack out the middle of the cake on the plate, so I tried my utmost to cut up the whole cake, insert a custard center, and then replace the top. It was not horrible, but it certainly didn’t win ANY points for presentation.
Not so this time. I mean, cookies are cookies. Nothing to it. They look good. They look like cookies.
I baked them Saturday night. Batted the hovering Not Your Average Blogger away from the bacon. Swatted the Young Prince away from the chocolate chips. Got all three dozen cookies baked and cooled and set. Wrapped them in individual Cello bags. Taped them up. They were very pretty.
Sunday morning I got up, did the ironing, cleaned the kitchen, fiddled around. Went and got NeighborGirl around 1:15, and off we all went to the fair. It was happily uncomplicated to find the right gate and building, and there wasn’t a huge crowd, which was nice. I filled out my entry forms, left the stuff on a cardboard platter, and then we took off and entertained ourselves wandering around other parts of the fair. We went from the baking booth to the barns, where we saw the baby goats and the giant pigs and the miniature horses. We went to the midway where the YP had a screaming nervous breakdown and got kicked off one of those rides that is basically a bunch of cars going around a circular track with some centrifugal force thrown in. We stopped on our way back to the baking contest and I finally notched off the last of the deep-fried desserts I had yet to try – a deep-fried Twinkie. It was quite good. Though having tried them all, I rather think the deep-fried Snickers are best.
We got back to the bake-off around 3, when the judging was going on. Since I had no idea how this worked, I wanted to see what the process was. NYAB and the YP lasted about 10 minutes before I gave NYAB my BlackBerry and told him that when it said 4:00, he should come back. That left me and NeighborGirl to sort of people-watch, gape, and chortle.
Lord, was there ever a lot to chortle at. I swear, I kept expecting Christopher Guest to yell “Cut!” and tell the various characters, “No, no, let the fat roll over your yoga pants show a little more,” or “Hey, you, try to look a little more keyed up!”
First of all, there was the hall itself. All the chocolate submissions were dished out on top of these glass cabinets, but inside the cabinets were winners of other contests – and it looked like some of them had been there for, ahem, a while. Mint leaves shriveled and gray-green. Pineapple upside-down cake that looked like it came from Morrison’s Cafeteria. Etc., etc.
Then there was the milling-around area for the current contest participants. For some reason, the poor woman trying to run this show apparently had made it her mission in life to leave no dead air between the time of the entry deadline and the winners being announced. I’m not clear on whether she was with the Red Cross, which would receive all the proceeds, or if she was involved with the fair, or what, but she sure did do a lot of talking. To further facilitate waiting, there were a bunch of folding chairs set up in five or six rows, all facing a counter with the prize baskets and a big portable easel. Why an easel? Because they were running a sort of strange little Jeopardy game that alternated questions about community safety (“What is one method to stop bleeding?”) and chocolate (“Is fermentation part of the chocolate making process?”) NeighborGirl and I spent a little bit of time making fun of this (“Pour salt in the wound!” “I do all my best binge drinking with chocolate!”) and then we wandered around and looked at winners of other contests. There sure are a lot of blue ribbons at county fairs. We couldn’t really figure it out. We’d be looking at “quilts, category 12A” and there were at least five blue ribbons. Very confusing.
Finally, 4 p.m. rolled around. Our nervous emcee woman – who I kid you not, was like a dwarfish and more nervous version of Jennifer Coolidge – introduced all the judges, and when she was done, some other woman came over and announced there was some kind of problem and they needed all the judges to come back. Off they all trundled. NYAB and the YP came back, and we “donated” $4 to the Red Cross to get two plates of samples of the various other entries. There was some good stuff, there was some bad stuff.
So there we are. Five minutes pass. Ten. Twenty. Because we’ve been there forever, we’ve scored three of the folding chairs in the back row. We’ve finished the chocolate, NeighborGirl and I are snarking away under our breath about whatever catches our eye, and the YP is on my lap being very annoying and squirmy and not resigned to waiting.
And Jennifer Coolidge has NOT SHUT UP the entire time.
Even though, of course, not five minutes previous I had been grousing to NeighborGirl that it would probably be less irksome if she’d just, you know, let us wait in peace and quiet.
(NeighborGirl and NYAB were no help whatsoever, let me add. Both of them were laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their faces. Of course, if the kid has been on NYAB’s lap, that is exactly what I would have done too.)
Emcee Lady was very nice about it, “Oh, yes, I know, I’m so boring! Just a few more minutes honey!” And to me, “It’s ok! I know he’s a little boy! They just do that!” Argh, argh, argh. NYAB finally composes himself and takes the YP out of the room for a talking to, and Emcee Lady wraps up her anecdote with, “So does anyone else have any INTERESTING stories?” Ugh, ugh, ugh.
NYAB and the YP return, and I tell the YP he must apologize to Emcee Lady. He says, “I know. Daddy already told me that. I will tell her I am sorry and I didn’t mean she was boring.”
So off he went, and apparently did a reasonably good job of it, as she smiled and patted his head and – he reported later – told him she understood and she was sorry he had to wait so long.
Finally, around 4:30 or so, the winners were announced. The third-place adult winner was one of the judges for the youth category, and the grand prize winner had the same last name and was off manning the cash register for the Red Cross “donations.” I don’t remember for sure, but I’m pretty sure one of the youth winners had the same last name too. I say the fix was in. Heh.
But here’s what I do know: Cake beats out cookies, cheesecake trumps cake, and ganache apparently tops everything. So I’m all set to try again next year!
I’ve been working on the bacon-chocolate cookie recipe for a while now. For the past two weeks I took in samples to the office and subjected co-workers to my experiments. I think I got it down just right in the last batch – a good mix of super-crunchy bacon with a moist chewy chocolate cookie that got the salty-sweet thing well-balanced.
The name? Depending on the audience they are Pigs in the Mud or they are BacOMGs. The name “BaConfections” was also suggested, but unfortunately when you say that out loud it sounds too much like “Bake Infections,” and what with swine flu and all, that was just sort of ew.
So I figured I had a decent submission for the chocolate bake-off. It tasted good, it had good texture, it was reasonably creative. And chocolate-y, dear lord, yes. 28 oz of chocolate, plus another half-cup of unsweetened cocoa.
Now mind you, the last time I entered a baking contest, I was 22. I entered a contest looking for lemon submissions that required a whole dessert plus one serving plated. I entered something called sunny-side-up cake, which was basically angel-food cake with a hole hacked out of the center and replaced with lemon custard. That lost too. At least partly because it never occurred to me that you’d just hack out the middle of the cake on the plate, so I tried my utmost to cut up the whole cake, insert a custard center, and then replace the top. It was not horrible, but it certainly didn’t win ANY points for presentation.
Not so this time. I mean, cookies are cookies. Nothing to it. They look good. They look like cookies.
I baked them Saturday night. Batted the hovering Not Your Average Blogger away from the bacon. Swatted the Young Prince away from the chocolate chips. Got all three dozen cookies baked and cooled and set. Wrapped them in individual Cello bags. Taped them up. They were very pretty.
Sunday morning I got up, did the ironing, cleaned the kitchen, fiddled around. Went and got NeighborGirl around 1:15, and off we all went to the fair. It was happily uncomplicated to find the right gate and building, and there wasn’t a huge crowd, which was nice. I filled out my entry forms, left the stuff on a cardboard platter, and then we took off and entertained ourselves wandering around other parts of the fair. We went from the baking booth to the barns, where we saw the baby goats and the giant pigs and the miniature horses. We went to the midway where the YP had a screaming nervous breakdown and got kicked off one of those rides that is basically a bunch of cars going around a circular track with some centrifugal force thrown in. We stopped on our way back to the baking contest and I finally notched off the last of the deep-fried desserts I had yet to try – a deep-fried Twinkie. It was quite good. Though having tried them all, I rather think the deep-fried Snickers are best.
We got back to the bake-off around 3, when the judging was going on. Since I had no idea how this worked, I wanted to see what the process was. NYAB and the YP lasted about 10 minutes before I gave NYAB my BlackBerry and told him that when it said 4:00, he should come back. That left me and NeighborGirl to sort of people-watch, gape, and chortle.
Lord, was there ever a lot to chortle at. I swear, I kept expecting Christopher Guest to yell “Cut!” and tell the various characters, “No, no, let the fat roll over your yoga pants show a little more,” or “Hey, you, try to look a little more keyed up!”
First of all, there was the hall itself. All the chocolate submissions were dished out on top of these glass cabinets, but inside the cabinets were winners of other contests – and it looked like some of them had been there for, ahem, a while. Mint leaves shriveled and gray-green. Pineapple upside-down cake that looked like it came from Morrison’s Cafeteria. Etc., etc.
Then there was the milling-around area for the current contest participants. For some reason, the poor woman trying to run this show apparently had made it her mission in life to leave no dead air between the time of the entry deadline and the winners being announced. I’m not clear on whether she was with the Red Cross, which would receive all the proceeds, or if she was involved with the fair, or what, but she sure did do a lot of talking. To further facilitate waiting, there were a bunch of folding chairs set up in five or six rows, all facing a counter with the prize baskets and a big portable easel. Why an easel? Because they were running a sort of strange little Jeopardy game that alternated questions about community safety (“What is one method to stop bleeding?”) and chocolate (“Is fermentation part of the chocolate making process?”) NeighborGirl and I spent a little bit of time making fun of this (“Pour salt in the wound!” “I do all my best binge drinking with chocolate!”) and then we wandered around and looked at winners of other contests. There sure are a lot of blue ribbons at county fairs. We couldn’t really figure it out. We’d be looking at “quilts, category 12A” and there were at least five blue ribbons. Very confusing.
Finally, 4 p.m. rolled around. Our nervous emcee woman – who I kid you not, was like a dwarfish and more nervous version of Jennifer Coolidge – introduced all the judges, and when she was done, some other woman came over and announced there was some kind of problem and they needed all the judges to come back. Off they all trundled. NYAB and the YP came back, and we “donated” $4 to the Red Cross to get two plates of samples of the various other entries. There was some good stuff, there was some bad stuff.
So there we are. Five minutes pass. Ten. Twenty. Because we’ve been there forever, we’ve scored three of the folding chairs in the back row. We’ve finished the chocolate, NeighborGirl and I are snarking away under our breath about whatever catches our eye, and the YP is on my lap being very annoying and squirmy and not resigned to waiting.
And Jennifer Coolidge has NOT SHUT UP the entire time.
All of a sudden, in the middle of a story about her first experience at the county fair was winning a blue ribbon for a jar of preserved green beans, out of absolutely nowhere, my darling son, sitting on my lap, fiddling with a pair of binoculars made out of toilet paper tubes, sits bolt upright and shouts out, in his best and loudest Rocky Horror voice, “BO-RRRING!!!”
(This, it turns out, was only to be expected. Rocky Horror was on TV last weekend. We taught him how to do the Time Warp dance. He lost interest after 45 minutes. I didn't really think anything but the dance had stuck in his brain. Serves us all right.)
I clap my hand over his mouth, but it is too late. I look around again for Christopher Guest and wish I could sink through the floor. I can feel my face flushing about 1569 shades of red as I howl, “YOUNG PRINCE! Shame on you!”Even though, of course, not five minutes previous I had been grousing to NeighborGirl that it would probably be less irksome if she’d just, you know, let us wait in peace and quiet.
(NeighborGirl and NYAB were no help whatsoever, let me add. Both of them were laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their faces. Of course, if the kid has been on NYAB’s lap, that is exactly what I would have done too.)
Emcee Lady was very nice about it, “Oh, yes, I know, I’m so boring! Just a few more minutes honey!” And to me, “It’s ok! I know he’s a little boy! They just do that!” Argh, argh, argh. NYAB finally composes himself and takes the YP out of the room for a talking to, and Emcee Lady wraps up her anecdote with, “So does anyone else have any INTERESTING stories?” Ugh, ugh, ugh.
NYAB and the YP return, and I tell the YP he must apologize to Emcee Lady. He says, “I know. Daddy already told me that. I will tell her I am sorry and I didn’t mean she was boring.”
So off he went, and apparently did a reasonably good job of it, as she smiled and patted his head and – he reported later – told him she understood and she was sorry he had to wait so long.
Finally, around 4:30 or so, the winners were announced. The third-place adult winner was one of the judges for the youth category, and the grand prize winner had the same last name and was off manning the cash register for the Red Cross “donations.” I don’t remember for sure, but I’m pretty sure one of the youth winners had the same last name too. I say the fix was in. Heh.
But here’s what I do know: Cake beats out cookies, cheesecake trumps cake, and ganache apparently tops everything. So I’m all set to try again next year!
AHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's hilarious!
Posted by: me | August 17, 2009 at 02:36 AM
Well, whatever you come up with next year should include bacon, if only for spite.
I call shenanigans. You should've placed.
Posted by: baldowl | August 18, 2009 at 06:38 PM
Nice blog, i think you have told your whole story in this blog .......
Posted by: Honeymoon bed breakfast | October 09, 2009 at 07:52 AM
Sigh. I know I should really delete this spam, but it cracked me up, so it stays.
Posted by: averageblogger | June 23, 2010 at 10:49 AM