Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 17, 1990 TAG: 9004170464
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Sarah Hester and Mickey Weikle broke the rules at least four dozen times last week - each time they judged a cake, pie or cookie in the Pulaski Pride Day bake-off.
"We had to judge on appearances - they were being auctioned off," Hester said of the array of chocolatey cakes and creamy pies baked by local citizens to raise money for the restoration of the old courthouse and train station.
Weikle, a food occupations teacher at Pulaski County High School, said there was a long list of standards for the baked goods.
"But we had to leave taste out of that one," she said. "We didn't want to cut up the products."
Cakes with bite marks don't do too well on the auction block.
Hester, a 4-H extension agent, said it was hard to judge the food without trying it, but sometimes you can judge a cake by its icing. And in some cases, you can even tell how it will taste.
"One of my fellows made a cake and I looked at it and told him it wouldn't taste right - there was too much baking soda. He looked at me and said, `Well, how can you tell that?'
"We tasted it and sure enough, it was bitter. It looked like it was boiled before it was set."
Weikle said she can look at a brownie and know if it hs been stirred properly. The same goes for oatmeal cookies, "if not every one has a raisin."
But in other competitions, she said, taste is pretty high on the list. "Everything is tasted," she said.
"The higher you go, the pickier they get."
Some of Weikle's food occupation students could aspire to become future pie judges.
If they do, they have to get training first, Weikle said.
"You don't just want someone off the street who makes a good pie once in a while," she said.
by CNB