Dessert Contest?

So we finished our official dessert contest last year over 6 months ago and Steve has proposed that we start up again.

Here are our reasons for considering doing it again:

• The first place winner moved across the country freeing up her slot
• The second place winner is withdrawing from the competition
• There are a few families that moved in since our last competition who we think could bring it
• It is a good way to celebrate our last few months
• The trophy is so cute, really it is

What is your vote?

Dessert Finale

When you are in the finals, you are supposed to have home court advantage.
You also should prepare a trophy in the event you don't win.

In spite of refrosting my red velvet cupcakes because the recipe contained too much sugar, those little red dealios with cream cheese topping still could not stand up to the amazing crunchiness of Katie's *lemony peach tart and maple cream sauce.

If you are going to lose on a dessert competition, being beat by this particular dessert makes it very sweet.
Now that we have run through two of these tournaments, I can honestly say that in this case, the best man really did win.

Congratulations to Katie on overcoming homecourt advantage and winning the FINAL round of baking. I think someone should alert Michelle Obama that a star baker is moving to the capital region.

And PS, though we had a small group, we were able to tackle immigration and engage in a heated debate about Arizona's new police state law. Now I bet you are sad you missed it.


*Not sure this is the real title

Last Man Standing

The last man was officially ousted last night from the dessert competition.  The dessert is shown in the back, a lovely carrot cake with a nuts vs. no nuts option.

Alas, Steve's tasty cream cheese was overcome by Jeannie's homage to the lemon festival, complete with a lemon rind curly q:

Nicole and Alexis were neck and neck until the very end with Nicole's stuffed apples beating out the pumpkin and spiced apple filled bundt cake (original recipe tyvm) by one vote.

At the very top of the picture above you will spy a chocolate pie with a chocolate merengue topping that was super scrumptious.  Jaqui's treat was trumped by a Karen's homemade baklava which I tragically did not capture digitally.  I have tried to make baklava before and it is extremely tricky.  Only the likes of an engineer like Karen could pull it off with such precision.  Sorry no photo but maybe a kind reader will submit one...

The last and perhaps most fierce competition was between K. Dorny's cupcakes and Vivian.  Vivian, supposedly a fan of the young women she serves in church, unabashedly came in the door swinging ready to take on the young Miss D and used a recipe from Pioneer Woman to make a crowd-pleasing crust with cute little whipped cream star decor.  For the record, while Vivan will advance to the next level, Miss D had all the children at the chocolate sprinkles.  My children were astonished that anyone could beat a cupcake with sprinkles.  They also insisted that I recount the chocolate merengue because they were shocked that anything with that much chocolate could lose in general.

A good time was had by all and thank you for playing!  Here is the updated bracket for our next competition, Friday November 6th at 7 pm.  All are invited to taste as we get closer to the final four:

Dessert Competition Update

So we had a great night with some very tough competitors. First up we had a match between a Tres Leches and an Ooey Gooy Butter Bar:


























The tres leches got some rave reviews but in the end the Ooey Gooey got a single deciding vote to push Katie into the next round.

We also had two equally shaped chocolate cakes and the single deciding vote cast upon Bridget much to her delight (she had chocolate chips in the bottom of her cake for the win):


























In the front of the above photo the white dusted chocolate cake took on a multi-layered chocolate and whipped cream doozy served up by Cherry, who in the end won in a tie-breaking second round of blind taste testers (blind as in, didn't know either baker):




















The big unappetizing pile of chocolate mousse was up against the eye-popping oreo treat found inside this bucket here:


























But in the end it was the chocolate mousse that won by a single deciding vote. I ought to say right now that I felt that this was the great injustice of the night--and if the kids were allowed to vote this dessert would have absolutely killed the mousse. As the mousse maker I ought to be grateful for the advancement in the tourney but it was not exciting to win against this truly deserving item.

At the end of the day, I guess the lesson is that when you use a half a pint of real whipping cream you really can't go wrong.

Here is the updated roster for the upcoming competition in two weeks:













Hence the next matchup on Saturday October 17th at 7 pm (moved back an hour due to popular demand)

Nicole v. A. Dorny
Jeannie v. Steve
Holly v. K. Dorny
Karen v. Jacqui

Lesson learned from the one vote separation: Bring TWO friends to cast a vote your way.

The real hero of the evening, however, was this child who was able to finagle her way into the mud and really get down and dirty during the dessert fest. As if the chocolate weren't enough...

My Two Worlds

I went grocery shopping yesterday and here is what I purchased:

Half of it was chemically-based snacks and treats (granola bars for the kids school snacks, non-enviro hair care products, fishy crackers for the Megs), etc. The other half are the ingredients I really wish we exclusively ate instead of the corn byproducts: Butternut squash, beets, celery, avocado, grapes, apples, etc. In the middle were the legumes: lentils, northern beans, etc.

Note two key ingredients, and the reason for this post: White flour and cool whip. Why? Dessert contest!!!

We hosted round one last night and it was full of one ingredient: Chocolate. There was not a single dessert that did not feature chocolate as the main ingredient and really, truly, this was the reason for hosting this little delightful event.

I meant to take a picture of the entries and something happened to distract me so in the end you will have to settle for an updated bracket. I am also going to request a recipe from each of our competitors so that by the end we can have a little book all put together.















Results are that the DiMartinis were MIA so Steve and K. Dorny move up automatically. The fact that they had a baby this month seems like a legit reason so we hope that they can join us for sampling and judging in the future.

Also moving up: Jacqui M. with her chocolate cheesecake and A. Dorny with a multilayered chocolate cake (including peanut butter chips and peanut butter mouse and brownie pieces on top, no lie). I promise to take several pictures next time.

Speaking of next time, we have changed the date/time to FRIDAY OCTOBER 2ND at 7 pm. The match-ups will be:

Katie v. J. Frostad
Billy v. Bridget
Lee v. B. Tuutau
Cherry v. Chantel

Happy Baking!

You Win Some You Lose Some

So since the cake competition is over in fewer than three hours and I have no chance, I am moving on to the next contest.

Honestly I don't mind losing because I didn't deserve it. Also I am not super competitive.

The dessert competition is starting up again in time for the fall. We had to manipulate a bit to accommodate some move-outs, and people who stuck around.

So here is the schedule for the next several rounds. If you cannot make your round, let me know so we can reschedule you:

Round 1
Saturday September 19th, 8 pm
K. DiMartini. v. Steve
D. DiMartini v. C. Dorny
Jo v. Jacqui
A. Dorny v. D. Tuutau

Round 2
Saturday October 3rd, 8 pm
Katie E. v. John F.
Billy v. Bridget
Lee v. B. Tuutau
Cherry v. Chantel

Round 3 October 17th, 8 pm

Round 4 November 14th, 8 pm

Semi-finals and Finals held 2010

Dessert Competition

I never thought it would come to this. I thought it would be great fun to have a little dessert competition but I didn't know that my own daughter would turn against me.

Bridget decided to enter her own dessert. She looked up a dessert online, then unsatisfied turned to the dessert doctor. Completely on her own she and Casey threw together a Chocolate Cake with chocolate chips in it. Pretty good really, and though she ranked fairly high, she was upset for a couple of reasons:

1) She felt that my dessert was worse than hers. According to her, the texture was horrible AND it didn't even turn out right.

2) She said that her father ranked lower than her because he made a "retarded" dessert. It was his strawberry cake which I think myself is tasty.

We told her she needed to learn to lose and that she was competing with adults but she wasn't interested in that part of it.

Anyway having said that, here are the current standings:


1. Nicole P.
2. Tie between Karen F. and Holly Y.
4. Jeannie S.
5. Cherry
6. *Vivian (is it true you are moving and going to drop out?)
7. Me
8. Billy
9. *Joceyln (too scared to face competition so she put in papers and is going on a mission instead)
10. *Freighbor Katie (moving to undetermined location since I am out of sugar)
11. John F.
12. Bridget
13. Brandy
14. Chantel
15. Kaitlyn D.
16. Danny D.
17. Jo
18. Alexis
19. Daniel T.
20. Jacqui
21. Caitlyn D. the younger
22. Steve

*Highly ranked individuals who were kicked out because they are too good for the SB water.

Here is the bracket for the fall. First we are going to move everyone into a place on the bracket, so we will do a single elimination, triple head-to-header in August. Dates coming soon...

Dessert Contest Teaser

Thank goodness for all our fun friends who participated in heat 2 of the Dessert Comp. I was feeling really deflated about all my recent travel (in case you lost track it has been every other week for the last 10 that I have been out of town.)

So we had some WOW desserts come for round two and Steve and I are working on the bracket. The male sports mind has proclaimed, however, that the wild cards must be ranked first so we are going to do one more round prior to setting it all up.

As a teaser, however, I am posting the top 5 dessert scores from both weeks (Katie E you were numero 8 but of course we are pulling you out)

The ones to beat (prior to WC ranking which might change of course):

1) Nicole P. for her Lemon Lime Lusciousness
2) Karen F. for her Hazelnut Chocolate Mousse Cake
3) Jeannie S. for her Tart
4) Cherry F. for her Crunchy Apple Pie
5) Vivian T. for her Life Fulfillment (in one bite)


Good work people! After the WC round I will post the bracket and overall results.

I'm Back. Sorta.

Here is me playing catch up:

1. Dessert contest


































































Amazing AND tasty stuff, right? I won't share my personal favorite until later since it would be unfair at this juncture. We have added the points but we are not publishing that info until we have the full results from this upcoming Sunday. So if you haven't participated so far, show up on Sunday with your dessert! Or if you already made a dessert, stop by and score.

2. The most relaxing place in the universe:










































What you cannot see is the amazingly comfy bed, the slide, the lego room, the home theater, or the lake in the backyard. Also you cannot see the homemade rolls or the strawberry pie with locally grown berries.

So... I am in town until Wednesday am, another trip without Meg. Albany this time and I will be back Sat.

My to do list is lengthy so I doubt I will catch up on reading my blog list but you never know.

My husband finally took the plunge into blogging with his Mormon History peeps. If you like reading non-fiction/blogs that do not reference adolescent fiction you can see his first post here.

Dessert Contest

We have decided to host a dessert competition this year and invite anyone who reads this post to participate. Please email me if you are interested in joining us. Here are the rules:

1. The first round starts on May 24th, 7 pm followed by the second round on June 7th. As long as you can bring a dessert to one of those nights you can qualify for this year's tournament. We will have two initial rounds to determine seeding and then set up a bracket based on the results of our first two rounds. Once we get back from summer travel we will begin the tournament.

2. Someone will win. Lots of people will lose. Everyone is not a winner in this game. Participants may be mocked both on this blog as well as possibly in a podcast.

3. The purpose of the tournament is to not only eat a ton of dessert but to have fun.

4. Participants must make a different dessert each round. If you make peanut butter cookies with hershey kisses in the center (or any other dessert) for two different rounds you will be disqualified.

5. Desserts must have a name. Useless names like "brownies" do not qualify but "Large and Luscious Chocolate Bars" is an acceptable title.

6. Children under the age of 16 cannot vote. Sorry but families with a lot of children try to pad the voting block and we don't allow that.

7. You can come and eat at each event even if you don't want to participate as a baker--in fact bakers should try to bring friends to increase their chances.

8. During the first two rounds, participants bake a dessert and all those in attendance will vote. The desserts will then be seeded and placed into the tournament. If we have a small number of participants we could go double elimination, but if we have a large number of people we will go single.

Any questions?