It's show time!!

Well, the day is finally upon us. In fact it has been for me for an hour and a half already! I really don't sleep well when i have things on my mind. It was the same yesterday morning too. Today is the first day of the Countess of Warwick Show - judgement day!

So yesterday i spent all day in the kitchen, literally the only break i had between 10am and 5pm was about an hour and a half over lunch. It started with the cherry cake, which despite baking at the right temperature (cooler for a fan oven unlike my practise run!), still decided to errupt in the centre but there's nothing that can be done about it now.

Then i moved onto the Honey and Banana Tea Bread, which again rose in the middle like last time.

Then came the Cheese and Olive scone bake as the final one before "half time", we also all had a bit of this for lunch as it was still warm plus you only need 4 squares for the show and the recipe makes 12. Well it should do, if you can roll out a perfect rectangle, but as i can't there were a couple of triangle corners, half size portions just right for me!

After a lunch of a tuna version of the lunch i had in Milan, it was back to the kitchen where i started on the Bakewell. It didn't bubble up too badly like last time, although my pasty seemed to shrink this time however luckily the filling didn't overflow! Frustratingly though, when i removed it from the flan tin i found a small patch on the bottom where the pasty wasn't cooked properly - lets just hope they don't cut through that bit when they judge it!

Finally, the chocolate chip cookies, which as before worked well apart from one which was a little darker than i would have liked (but who's to know if one is missing! Sshhhh....).

Then all that was left to do, having sorted the crafts and photos earlier, was pull up some veg. After pulling about 20 carrots i finally decided on 5 that were good quality and roughly similar, the beetroot was easier as there were 3 decent sized ones and they were luckily all a very similar size too! All thats left is the cherry tomatoes, which i will go and pick then select in a minute (it was a little dark at 5.30am when i packed up the baking!) and at the last minute, so it keeps fresh, pick the chard. I'll add photos of those two into the slide show at a later date.

Only an hour and a half before i have to leave at the latest, time for another cup of tea to calm my nerves i think! Wish me Luck!