2011

I entered our county fair which is always the last weekend in August.  I entered three things:

1)  Cherry Pie
2)  Raspberry Streusel Muffins
3)  Blueberry Cobbler

The cherry pie recipe I'd gotten from my stepmother-in-law, Alice Nulle.  I didn't make her pie crust that goes with the recipe.  I'm still a newbie when it comes to making pie crusts and I found one awhile back that I really like and I used that.  It turned out quite well, as did the whole pie, as I won a Champion ribbon for it!

Both the Raspberry Streusel Muffins and the Blueberry Cobbler both got Second Place ribbons. Not bad. However, they didn't turn out the way I'd hoped.  On the muffins, the comments on the back of my entry card was "Flavor?? and "all the muffins must be the same in size."  The comment on the Blueberry Cobbler was "too mushy for a cobbler."  Hmmm??  I had to think about the comments.  "Flavor??" on the muffins - I thought they tasted "rasberryeee."  I guess when the judge cut into it to taste, he/she didn't get a piece of raspberry.  The rest of the muffin apparently didn't have much flavor.  When we got home I got one of the muffins, cut into it and asked my husband how it tasted.  He said "there's no taste to it."  We had both tasted an entire muffin the night before the fair and thought that it was good!  Well, this was my first time entering a county fair. I would just have to work on the size of the muffins and make muffins that you could definately taste the flavor in!!  The mushiness of the cobbler was something I hadn't even considered.  Thinking back on the blueberries I used, I didn't use the small round ones that the recipe had suggested. Safeway had some really nice, large blueberries that I bought and come to think of it - blueberries are 90% water. THAT's the reason the cobbler was mushy! I had used the same cobbler recipe that I used in 2010 for the blackberry cobbler. Only this time I used blueberries instead of blackberries.  Live and learn . . .