It started with cross stitch, but Catherine Dobby soon switched to baking and has gone on to dominate competitions at the Marlborough A&P show ever since.
Catherine first entered her cross stitch in 1999, but her pikelets, shortbread and chocolate cake have been her most consistent winners, as she has picked up a prize every year.
She has always loved to cook. Her grandmother was her first teacher when she was young and the passion has grown from there.
"I love feeding other people. It's a passion of mine, and I'm always trying out new things."
She also learned the tricks to her prize-winning pikelets as young girl.
"When I was a girl of 10 I started cooking pikelets at the [Blenheim] Presbyterian fete. They are renowned pikelet makers," she said.
"You have got to beat your butter and your sugar till it's really, really thick. I use a whisk, but you have got to beat for a long time and hard."
To keep the pikelets smooth and golden brown they must be turned before the bubbles on the uncooked side burst.
Catherine said she always cooks dishes from scratch and makes a wide range of her own jams and chutneys.
She makes all her family's baking and with two hungry teenagers to feed, one who is gluten-intolerant, baking helps keep the bills down.
To help her feed her cooking passion, Catherine collects recipes from everywhere. Over the years she has built up a large collection of recipe books, some more than 50 years old, picking them up at garage sales and shops.
"Volunteering at the Salvation Army store is quite good too – they get quite a lot of them there," she said.
She even has an Amish cookbook, but these days she mostly sources recipes from the internet and for her pikelets and shortbread she sticks to the traditional Edmonds cook book recipes.
When she is not cooking, Catherine still likes to cross-stitch, plans to do some quilting and likes to read.
For now, though, most of her time is taken up with her sons, Andrew, 16, and Joshua, 14, and preparing to enter the A&P show.
A competitive cook when it comes to the show, her shortbread recipe is also down to such an exact standard she will throw out a mixture that doesn't feel right.
"I can tell by feeling the mixture before you cook it that it's going to be a good mixture.
"I can't describe that feeling – it just comes with experience."
She does have some tips, though, for aspiring A&P entrants.
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"With the shortbread you have got to beat your butter and your icing sugar till it changes colour.
"I use an electric beater and I usually start slowly and then turn it up, walk away and do something else for two or three minutes."
Entries for the A&P show cooking competitions close on October 1.
Shortbread
250g butter, softened
1 cup icing sugar
1 cup cornflour
2 cups plain flour
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Sift cornflour and flour together.
Mix sifted ingredients into creamed mixture. Knead well.
On a lightly floured board roll out 0.5 centimetres thick.
Shape into a circle or cut into pieces.
Place on a greased oven tray.
Prick with a fork. Bake at 150 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.
American Chocolate Cake
2 cups flour
1 1/3tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups sugar
1/2cup of cocoa
120g butter
2 eggs
1 cup milk
Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.
Melt the butter and mix with the eggs and milk.
Combine all the ingredients and add 1 cup of hot coffee and 1 tsp of vanilla essence.
Pour mixture into a large cake tin and bake for one hour at 180C.
- The Marlborough Express Last updated 15:03 31/08/2011
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