Winner takes it all

I went to the allotment the other day and brought back a mountain of spinach leaves. I gave some to my neighbour, who shares the allotment with me, and grows some of the plants for it. I found this recipe for a Dahl, I made it and it tasted very good. 

So onto the TRHA Summer show. I was to make a carrot cake to enter and a lemon drizzle for the teas. I also decided to make another Guinness cake for the teas also. Access to the kitchen was going to be difficult as it was going to be decorated during the last two days of the week. Anyway I decided I wanted to up my game in the decoration department and I went to a craft shop in Reading to buy some nozzles and a piping bag. I also took the time, to buy myself some replacement shorts, the ones I used when the cage was on, were getting tatty. So I bought a couple of new ones and some gym shoes.


 Carrot cake baked, I cut it in its middle and iced together the two bits and iced the top of that. So far so good. I put a circle of walnuts around the perimeter of the cake and after a couple of practice runs, with the bag and nozzle, I iced from each walnut to the centre of the cake. Once this was done I got a small piece of orange fondant icing, fashioned three carrots out of it, and then tapped their fat end into some green colouring dye. The result did not look too bad.


I then made the lemon drizzle cake and the Guinness cake. Today, I took all the cakes and myself to the local hall where the show takes place. We did the setup and I placed my carrot cake by my named card. As the other entries came in, I could see what everyone’s else’s looked like.  From an appearance point of view, mine seemed good. The domestic judge turned up and judged all the classes she had too, and later on my friend from the TRHA committee gave me the thumbs up! I had won! 


I was really pleased, I am not at all competitive, which  is why I am useless at sports. I think it’s inspired me to do a better job of decorating my cakes, to make them more visually appealing. I picked up my neighbour to take her to the Show, which she enjoyed. She has been in France with her daughter and son in law, she brought back, a nice bottle of wine, local cherries and some local sheep cheese. I have drunk some of the wine, eaten some of the cheese and eaten all of the cherries. All were very enjoyable. I have distributed some of the cake to local friends, I have enough left to enjoy and share some more. 


My final photo is an exhibit at the show in the class for cacti. This beast is thirty years old, and was only one finger to start with! It was in its flowering phase. Not surprisingly it won that class.



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