The Harrow Fair 2008 blog entry seems to have left people with questions that I didn't think to answer before.
There were a few entries that I forgot to mention last time. Lori (who brought it to my attention!) won a third for her Johnny Cake (cornbread). I have also had a request to show the prize-winning photos. The 2nd place Winter Shenanigans is above, and the Honourable Mention Transportation photo is below (did I mention that Alan took both the photos?).
For Lori's Bacon Three Ways entry, she used baked beans with bacon, a delicious potato salad with double smoked bacon, and cornbread with double smoked bacon. She served a ramekin of each on a plate. If she were doing it again, she would label each ramekin with the proper names. The three bacon dishes weren't actually tasted by the judges, they were judged on appearance and probably thoughtfulness. This category was a special one to go along with the theme "Hog Wild", and I doubt it will be in again next year.
Speaking of themes, next year's Harrow Fair will have the theme "Flower Power". I bet they will have some new categories for food with flowers in it. Earlier this summer on a trip down to my sister's, I tried a rose petal angel food cake, made by the wife of the chef of "On the Twenty" (the restaurant attached to the Cave Springs Winery, and also where we had our wedding reception). She had said that her roses were going crazy this year and she was trying to find different things to do with them. The flavour in that angel food cake was subtle but automatically you knew it was roses. And the pink flecks throughout the cake were beautiful. That would be an excellent entry for next year!
This weekend is the Lincoln County Fair down in Beamsville (Niagara). Lori decided she would enter a few things, one of them being the angel food cake category, which had a top prize of $85. Tuesday afternoon, Lori & my gorgeous nephew Hugh arrived, partially to babysit my kids while I was out teaching a knitting class, and partially for me to help with the baking for the Beamsville Fair.
We decided that she should enter the deviled egg category, along with an apple pie, a pumpkin pie, sticky buns, and the angel food cake. There are some things about eggs that I have learned in the last little while. Really fresh eggs don't peel nicely. For deviled eggs, the eggs should be at least a couple weeks old, if not more. Since I get my eggs right from the source, I rarely have eggs that are suitable. However, I used what I thought were the oldest eggs in the fridge and I did end up with a few perfectly peeled eggs. I followed Bonnie Stern's recipe for "Old-fashioned Deviled Eggs" and they would have been really good if I hadn't added the 1 teaspoon of salt that it called for in the recipe. They were way too salty and then we had to try and doctor them up, even boiling more eggs so that we could add more yolks. Lori said she didn't care for the fresh tarragon that I added either. Maybe next time I would just add fresh chives.
On Tuesday night, I looked through a bunch of my cookbooks for a suitable recipe for angel food cake. Lori suggested we use the Canadian Living recipe, which sounded good as they often have all the standards. That first cake was overdone, unfortunately, and we agreed that I should try again. For the second one, I used Bonnie Stern's recipe from her "Essentials of Home Cooking" cookbook. It was better, but neither of them had the really light texture (that you can probably get with a box of angel food cake mix). Turns out, some recipes call for superfine sugar, and the 1st prize winner's recipe showed that she used superfine sugar. I should have run the regular white sugar through the food processor and I probably would have had a lighter cake.
After making both the apple and pumpkin pies in my own pie plates, Lori read the rule book and said that they needed to be in disposable aluminum pie plates. Thanks for reading the directions ahead of time, Lori... However, a variety of my friends and neighbours didn't mind in the least! I quickly whipped up some more pie dough and Lori went home and baked another apple pie.
For the sticky buns, I assured Lori that I still had a log of the frozen buns that took 1st place in Harrow. When she actually forced me to check the freezer, I realized I had left them in the freezer at my parent's house. Luckily, I had a small dish of three apple cinnamon twists that hadn't fit in the other pans. I pulled the buns out of the freezer and in the morning they were ready to bake off. Lori called yesterday to let me know that the apple cinnamon twists took 1st place in the sticky bun category! If you haven't made these yet, check them out on the blog (April '08). They are really very easy and they are a great way to "make friends and influence others"!
This might be it till next year on the country fair front. I hope that you have maybe been inspired to enter a local fair or at least attend and check out all the wonderful things they have to offer. We will be making our annual visit to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto, coming up this fall. I wonder if they have baking contests? Hmmmm...
