Quilting Time Out - County Fair Bake-Off

So last night my friend sent out a message that her group was sponsoring a bake-off at the county fair. (Sounds awfully Kermit meets Miss Piggy at the beginning of The Muppet Movie, doesn't it?)  She gave a few details, like event time and the focus ingredient (apples).  I thought, what the heck.  The little girlie and I can whip out an apple cake in the morning.  So we did.  It's called "Harvest Pound Cake" and is from the Betty Crocker site.  I didn't use the nuts though, because I don't like them in baked goods.  I figured we'd go, support my friend and then be stuck with a cake that the judge hated, even though I've enjoyed it.  No way was I going to ruin my tasty apple cake with nuts.  It didn't come out of the pan quite the way it should have & I lost a chunk.  I did pick it out of the pan & stick it back on.  Since the cake was glazed in a caramel sauce, I had something to make sure it stayed there.  Other than that, it looked pretty good.

With cake baked, we headed off to the fair, where it promptly began to rain once we were ten feet from the car.  Awesome.  Now I'll be wet & told that my cake sucks.  Luckily we parked fairly close to the bake-off tent.  We had about 45 minutes until the start of judging, so we wandered around looking at rabbits, chicken, sheep and llamas. 

Back at the judging tent, we sat through the two items in the crusted category (a pie & a dumpling) and the two items in the bread/muffin category (one bread and one muffin).  The pie and bread won their respective categories.  Then came the miscellaneous category.  It was my cake vs. some apple cookies.  The cookies went first.  The hubs and I thought my cake wasn't going to make it.  So far, the judge had chosen the first item tasted for each category.  Mine was being tasted second.  She commented that the cake didn't seem to want to come out of the pan, but that it was common in Bundt pans.  Whew - at least that wasn't the issue I thought it would be.  Then she commented on the apples - apparently they sank to the bottom of the pan.  I say that apples will be apples & to leave them alone... (picky, picky, picky...).  She did say that it had good flavor!  YAY!  Then, as my daughter would say, BAM, she picked mine to win. I did not, however, win overall bake-off champion.  That went to the apple pie.