Roll up, Roll up – It’s nearly Perth Royal Show Time! First up, happy memories of the Bread and Pastry Awards!

The opportunity to try your hand at being a pastry judge is not one that comes along too often so I jumped at the chance when it was recently offered. Hunter Communications is working with the Royal Agricultural Society of Western Australia as part of this year’s Perth Royal Food Awards and decided to introduce a Bloggers Award for certain categories at the Show. One of these was Bread and Pastry and that’s how I found myself at Claremont Showgrounds one afternoon with the bloggers Helenrelativestyle and Good Food of Perth to pick our favourites in these categories:

• Carrot Cake
• Muffins
• Doughnuts
• Cupcakes

They were pretty great categories and ahead of getting underway, Chief Judge Mike gave us a run down on what to look for. It is true that you first eat with your eyes so appearance is important. Then elements like flavour, texture, technique all come into it. It’s actually really quite technical. The judges had been there all day working their way through the pastry categories and if you look here you’ll see that it’s a very lengthy list.

We’d kindly been given a table with five or so entrants from each category and what a spread it was! It looked seriously amazing! We were all a little giddy with excitement and hadn’t yet taken a bite. But it was time and we keenly kicked off proceedings.

We systematically worked our way through each group. Doughnuts were up first – some iced, some filled, and we chatted amongst ourselves about what we liked about each of them. I don’t think any of us were under any illusion that we had real experience in this judging space, albeit that we were enthusiastic eaters and super stoked to be involved.

So carrot cake followed and this was actually my favourite group. Such varied representation of this classic cake and cream cheese frosting is always delicious.

Muffins were up next, mainly fruity and we were looking for an even spread of fruit throughout the actual muffin. I’ve always been pleased that the muffin provides a legitimate option for eating cake for breakfast. Big win right there!

Cupcakes rounded out proceedings, because if were weren’t buzzing already from a fairly epic sugar rush, then some decadently iced cupcakes would do the job. These really highlighted bakers creativity! The icing work was outstanding.

So after an entirely fun hour we deliberated and made our selections:

And our #BloggersBest were……

 Overall Winners

1. Bindoon Bakehaus and Cafe– carrot cake
2. The Sassy Cookie– cupcake
3. Mj Creations– cupcake

Class 25 – Carrot Cakes

1. Bindoon Bakehaus and Cafe(Gold 1st)
2. Pinjarra French Hot Bread Shop (Silver 2nd)
3. Bittersweet Bake (Bronze 3rd)

Class 30 Muffins

1. Pinjarra Bakery & Patisserie (Gold 1st)
2. Cocochino (Silver 2nd)
3. Crusty’s Fresh Bread (Bronze 3rd)

Class 32 – Cupcakes

1. The Sassy Cookie (Gold – 1st)
2. Mj Creations (Silver – 2nd)
3. Strange Grains Gluten Free Bakery (Bronze -3rd)

Class 33 Donuts

1. Top Dup (Gold 1st)
2. Glazed and Confused (Silver 2nd)
3. Pinjarra Bakery & Patisserie (Bronze 3rd)

Keep an eye out for the #PerthRoyalFoodAwards medal stickers as they start to appear on all the winning products around town soon! An amazing effort by all the entrants. My thanks to them for their superb skills, I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to try them!

So remember folks mark your diaries, September 23 – 30 for this year’s IGA Perth Royal Show! For all the ticket details head here.