This year’s joint national winner was a New Plymouth bakery, Piccolo Morso, (the other winner was Hamilton’s Volare artisan bread shop). I haven’t had the pleasure of tasting their wares but I have seen photos which confirm that the altitude issue must be exacerbated by the border of hand-piped icing around the perimeter of each square.
To add extra peril, the piped icing walls enclose a pool of passionfruit syrup and once that wall is bite-breached, the seed-specked lava could escape and add extra colour to dress or trouser or bare leg. Or carpet.
Despite the perils, the queues are reportedly out the door and there is plenty of laughter as each person in the queue orders the same as the person before them. The bakery is no stranger to success having won best sausage roll in Taranaki earlier this year and last year its vegan korma pie won best in its category in a national pie-making competition.
Of course, sausage rolls and pies are not without their perils either. Flaky pastry is, by its very nature, flaky, and biting into either product can end with fragile flakes falling to the floor. Or lap. I know doubters will be urging the use of a plate and cutlery but they would be forgetting that both these foods are very often eaten direct from a paper bag while on the go.
The humble sausage is probably the least perilous of those items mentioned so far. That said, if it’s served in a wrap of sliced white bread, the added tomato sauce can, without due care and attention, make things interesting.
The Great New Zealand Sausage Competition (GNZSC) is now in its 27th year, testament to Kiwis’ love of the humble snag/snarler/saussie. Last year’s winner was a pure lamb sausage from Sam’s Butchery in Silverdale but there were plenty of more creative entries such as Westmere Butchery’s Sweet Orange Jalapeno Chicken Sausage!
Fish and chips – and even chips alone – can also be entered in national competitions. The only real peril in these food items comes if you are eating them outdoors beside the sea where you might have to compete with cheeky seagulls.
A bit of drippage is usually the worst that can happen with an ice cream cone though on one occasion my first lick dislodged the entire roll of iced confection from the cone. It fell to the ground and picked up a not unattractive coating of gravel.
There are plenty more relatively peril-free icons which might benefit from some competition. I accept that there may already be contests which I don’t know about for these items but, if not, it might be time to start them up: New Zealand’s best melting moment? Afghan? Lamington? Anzac biscuit? Cheese scone?
Or one for the really creative: New Zealand’s quirkiest baked novelty item? The imagination runs riot. If you’ll kindly excuse me now, I’m heading straight for my creative kitchen.
Warning: there will be built-in perils.
