Chocolate is my bestest friend
The event was a smashing success! Over 40 people showed up to sample the delicious cakes entered in the contest.
Folks were so enthusiastic that the Castle plans to make this a yearly event!
The kick off time for the contest was 7 PM. This Friday evening was the day after we got hit with that tidy little dump of 14 inches of snow. (I’m from the States….don’t talk to me about centimetres!)
I was one of the three people who’d be judging the cakes. As I headed up that steep hill at 6:45 to get to the Castle parking lot I made the fatal error of pausing as I decided which parking lot to head into.
You know that old adage about “he who hesitates is lost” and all…. well, there was a gentle little rain coming down that turned that pile of slush snow on the road into a skating rink.
I have snow tires on my little chariot, but they ain’t the greatest snow tires in the world and when I stopped my forward motion I promptly got stuck.
It was the kind of stuck where your car slides sideways and backwards, and wants to spin around in a circle, but cannot go forward at all.
Ultimately everyone backed down the hill behind me. I then backed down the hill and parked at the bottom where I wouldn’t cause any more trouble. Castle Inn manager Karen Grierson came down in a 4×4 truck to haul me up the hill!
12 people had entered the contest. One contestant had dropped out, so there were 11 fabulous desserts vying for the grand prize….which was dinner for two at the Castle and a night in the Royal Suite.
My fellow judges were Linda Ayotte and Hubert St Thomas. I’d never been a food judge before but what a blast to be asked to judge a cake contest!
We were judging the entries on several categories, including presentation and creativity but of course the real judgment clincher for any cake was going to be flavour and texture.
Every contestant went all out in making and presenting their cakes! The cakes were all very beautiful. We judges looked at them all together first, to start making our preliminary assessments on appearance, then we were sequestered in a private room for the tasting. The tasting was all anonymous of course….we only knew the cakes by number to make sure we judged on chocolate merit alone!
The crowd was anxious to start tasting as well. Everyone who showed up to check out this contest got to sample the cakes too!
We discussed the cakes but made our own individual assessments in all the categories. When we added up all the scores, we discovered that we had all picked the same cakes in the same order!
Dieuwke McDonough’s dark chocolate orange layer cake was our clear favourite, but Karen Gee’s chocolate raspberry confection came in a close second place.
This event was so much fun the Castle will be hosting another Chocolate Cake Bake-Off next year as well!
Stephanie Kelley
