Last of the Fair Updates

Well, this will be the last of the fair updates as the busy week is done and over for another year. Thursday and Friday nights we didn't compete in anything. We really needed to prepare for the big cake contest on Sunday and I was entering the casserole contest on Saturday. I also had dinner to fix for the church youth group on Sunday evening and had to take that to the church before heading to the fair. So Saturday, I entered my shepherd's pie in the casserole competition and guess what.......I won!!! My first blue ribbon at the fair. I was so shocked and surprised that tears came to my eyes. Really, I didn't expect to win anything this year. All of this was just for fun, but the win on Saturday made it a whole lot more fun. There were some really good casseroles there too. Well, then comes Sunday. My daughter and I started in the kitchen about 7am. Saturday we had baked the cakes themselves so Sunday we had the icings to work on. She was doing a coconut/lime buttercream icing which takes quite a bit of time and I was doing my fudge icing and my cake was filled with buttercream and cherry glaze. Petunia's cake was absolutely gorgeous. It truly could have come out of any professional bakery in town. After spending most of the day making the icing she then made candied limes to decorate it.Here is her cake:

Then there was my cake. I guess I simply did not cook my icing long enough. It went on the cake just fine, but in the heat of traveling in the car (even in a cooler) and then sitting on the table while the judges made their rounds, the icing began its slide off the sides of the cake. The cake is delicious, but doesn't look too great because fudge icing just was not ready to set up properly. Here is my pitiful cake:

So needless to say, I did not expect mine to even place much less win. I was almost ashamed to even claim it, but I did. Petunia's on the other hand I did expect to at least place after looking at the other youth entries. There really was only 1 other cake that looked as nice as hers. I expected that cake would win first if it tasted as nice as it looked. All of the others looked like my three year old had decorated them and some looked worse than that. Not only did her's look fabulous (appearance is 40% of the score), but I have tasted this cake before when she has made it and it is really really good (50% of score). However, she didn't even place. It was tough. She had handled the disappointment of not winning throughout the week, but this loss was tough. She knew her cake was fabulous and she had put so much time into it. This loss brought tears in the car. However, I am so proud of her. Once she got through the tears she determined that she was going to make the same cake until it won something even if she took years to do it. The loss made her more determined and more confident in what she had produced. It's a great lesson that will last her a lifetime. She has always sought her self verification from other people, but this was a turning point in which she verified her own abilities and didn't need someone else to tell her that her cake truly is a blue ribbon cake ( or at least a white). This one milestone made the whole week of effort and hard work worth it. So to me, it was definitely a blue ribbon week. Now, time to plan for next year!!!!Have a blessed day!