Competition Cake

Posted by: CC Bakes


A few weeks ago I entered a banana cake in the Royal Melbourne Show baking competition. Now this had been planned with a friend months ago and we had had much baking preparation and had spent many weekend mornings sampling and discussing the characteristics of competition winning cakes.

As the winter months swung around, we found it particularly difficult to find ripe bananas, and that once procured, it was was a slow process for further ripen prior to bake. So in preparation to competition bake, I made sure I had bananas ready to ripen two weeks earlier. I had also mastered my slanted oven, found the best quality butter and flour to use and noted the correct baking time, as well as how to successfully remove cake from tin intact. But most importantly the bananas had to be ripe, almost to the point of rotten. An unripe banana can cause entrants to pull out from competition bake, as my baking partner was forced to do. I was not sway, all was on track for a blue medal ribbon.

Several days prior to competition bake I decided to check on my bananas and give them and extra kick for ripeness by squashing them further inside their skin. I woke up early the morning of the bake-off, with a strict one hour window for delivery of baked goods to the Show Grounds on a Sunday morning. Upon removing my competition cake from the oven, I found, for the first time in many cake bakes, that my banana cake had some strange lumps on the exterior, like sun spots. After much deliberation I realised my blunder. The bananas were in fact too ripe and had fermented inside their skins, with the aid of my own mashing.

Lesson learnt, and I think I’ll enter the carrot cake category next year.

Another delicious taste of what comes every Tuesday from CC Bakes.
Want to ask CC a question? ccbakes@theblackmail.com.au