Spring Fair!

Each year there is a fair in the fall for those of us that want to show off our harvest wares.  I haven’t ever entered but I do often go to volunteer with my various tree and gardening groups.  This year I may actually put in a few things in the canning division.  I think my lavender blueberry jam is worth a ribbon!

In the Spring there is a fair just for those under aged farm kids.  There are contests for those between ages 6-11 and ages 12-16.  I have one kiddo in each of those groups and they love participating in the fair.  This year, they decided to stick to the baking section. 

Cyan had big dreams.  She LOVES Cakeboss and the new “Next Great Baker” show.  She is always inspired to create huge sugary concoctions after a marathon of either of these.  This year, for the fair, she wanted to make a beautiful layer cake ala Cakeboss.  She spent a whole week practicing her icing technique and learning to do lettering with frosting (which is actually really hard!).  Her hard work paid off though.  She ended up with a beautiful cake to enter in the fair!

Logan’s fair entry was for the 6-11 section.  In this section they have a few more ‘rules’ than in the older kids.  The kids all have a common recipe but they are graded on accuracy, execution and form.  In this years case, it is was “Turtle Bread”!  Logan mixed, formed, let rise, and baked this bread with very little help from me aside from lots of reading and mixing when it was still messy.  I liked that he was able to participate without the confusion of so many other steps (like choosing his own recipe).  I am including this years recipe below so if you want to, you can make your own Turtle Bread! 

This recipe is directly from the Puyallup Spring Fair website:

Turtle Bread

Ingredients:

2 1/2 - 3 cups all purpose flour

1 Tablespoon white sugar

1/2 cup water

1 Tablespoon butter or margarine

2 raisins

1 package dry active yeast

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup milk

1 egg

shorting as needed (I used parchment paper)

 

Directions:

1. Measure flour.  Mix 1 1/2 cups of flour with dry yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl.
2. Heat water, milk, and butter to 125* to 130*; stir into yeast-flour mixture.
3. Stir in egg.  Stir in enough of remaining flour to make the dough easy to handle.
4. Sprinkle a surface lightly with flour.  Turn dough onto surface and knead until smooth and elastic, approximately 5 minutes.  Cover dough and let rest for 10 minutes.
5. Lightly grease cookie sheet with shortening.
6. Shape a 2-inch piece of dough into a ball for the head.  Shape four walnut sized pieces of dough into balls for feet.  Shape one walnut sized piece of dough into a tail.  Shape remaining dough into a ball for the body; place on cookie sheet and flatten slightly.  Attach head, feet and tail by placing one end of each under the edge of the body to secure.  Press two raisins into the head for eyes.  Cover and let rise for 20 minutes.
7. Heat oven to 400*.
8. Make crisscross cuts in the body 1/4 inch deep, to look like a turtles shell.  Bake until golden brown, 20-25 minutes.
9. Immediately remove from cookie sheet with a spatula.  Let cool on a wire rack. 

Yields one turtle bread.

 

My kids all ready for the fair!  I am SO proud of my kids this year.  They both worked really really hard and both of them learned quite a bit from their chosen entry.  We dropped them off yesterday and we will see how they did next weekend. 

Mostly though, we just do it because it’s FUN!