The fine art of baking a dark rich fruit cake went under the microscope – and the knife – during the weekend in Warwick when the region’s agricultural show winners in the fruit cake section had the opportunity to pit their best fruit cakes against each other.
It was an almost solitary affair, as the judge Val Raynor, assisted by stewards Elaine Kahler and Lynette Munt, sliced into seemingly perfect fruit cakes to decide the best three cakes in the competition, which was the Darling Downs Sub-Chamber of Agricultural Societies’ 2023 competition to find the best dark rich fruit cake. The entrant with the winning cake is then eligible to be judged at the State Finals (the Ekka) in accordance with Queensland Ag Show rules.
On Saturday (May 27), entries arrived at the Warwick Showgrounds from the winners (or runners up if the winners were not available) in each local show’s dark rich fruit cake competition at Dalby, Bell, Toowoomba, Crows Nest, Goondiwindi, Clifton, Goombungee-Haden and Stanthorpe. (Unfortunately the Warwick Show was not represented.)
Make no mistake: baking a fruit cake is a very serious affair. To have any hope of having a winning cake in a competition like the Queensland Ag Show, contestants have to be at the top of their baking game. Of course the cake must be baked perfectly, but it must also have sharp corners, straight sides, no rack marks, no holes and a smoothed top. Fruit has to be cut to uniform sizes, which means hours and hours of cutting to make sure every piece of fruit and every piece of peel in the 2.25kg batch is the same size.
The cakes arrive in different guises. They can be posted in or be placed in a sturdy cardboard box or in a plastic container or wrapped in tea towels. But once they are brought out of the packaging, there are no names; from then on it’s number identification only until the winning cakes have been chosen.
This year’s winners were Loretto Voll from Goombungee-Haden Show, 1st; Linda Ashton from Toowoomba Show, 2nd; Manny Sorley from Bell Show, 3rd. Loretto Voll can go forward to compete in the State Finals.
