Baking & Entering

The past few days I have been very busy baking up a storm. I have entered a bunch of my baked goods in a local baking competition at the exhibition. I competed in this for the first time last year, and I was quite pleased with the results. I entered five different items twice, each in the junior and the senior category since I qualified for both. I placed either first, second, or third with every item in both categories. The results of last year are posted in my entries from September 1st and 2nd, 2011. This year, I qualify for both the junior and senior categories again, so I will be entering five of the same items in both, along with two additional items in just the senior category and three additional items in just the junior category. The junior and senior categories do not contain the same listing of baked items, and the senior has a lot more selection, which is why I am baking a few individual junior and senior items. However, since many items overlap, I chose many of those, since this way I only need to bake the item once but can enter it twice. 
So lately I have been busy baking, frosting, decorating, slicing, packaging, and labeling my baked goods. I haven't featured many of these items on the blog because they are mostly tried and trued recipes I have made before, so they have already been featured on the blog before. I also had a few things stored in the freezer that I will be exhibiting, to save time and some baked items actually benefit from a short time in the freezer (and some certainly don't). All items need to be sliced to perfection, just the right size and shape. Then they need to be placed on paper plates in plastic bags and tied up and labeled. It's all a little bit time consuming, and a bit tedious to ensure everything looks perfect, but the baking part is certainly fun and it all pays off. This year I have fifteen separate entries, composed of ten different baked items, because five of the items are being entered twice into both the junior and senior categories. Here is a picture of all of my entries, sliced, bagged, labeled, and ready to go. I will have the results tomorrow!