Fair tasters have sweet job

Each year hundreds of people enter homemade cakes, cookies and other baked goodies in the Mother Lode Fair, and for the past three years, mother and daughter judging duo Ilene and Michelle Ballowe have tasted them all.

“It’s fun,” Michelle Ballowe, of Soulsbyville,  said Thursday.

“We love the fair,” agreed her mother, Ilene Ballowe, of Twain Harte.
   

Michelle has taken culinary classes and for the past 15 years has catered events from small 30-person parties to 500-person events for the Word of Life Fellowship in Mi-Wuk Village. She also has years of restaurant experience.

“It’s fun. We’re kind of a cooking, baking family,” Ilene said.

Thursday afternoon they kicked off their tasting and judging with junior baked cakes and then decorated cakes, followed by cookies.

“In kids’ divisions, we can give out more ribbons. It’s always fun, because we want them to continue on with this,” Ilene said.

As the pair went through each division, they noted things such as whether cakes were from scratch or cake mix, presentation and appearance, taste, moistness, consistency, creativity, age of baker and their skill level, among other things.

When they moved on to the chocolate chip cookies, the Ballowes only needed to take a couple of bites and could tell whether the baker used too much oil, not enough salt and so on.

“We put all of it together” to make the final decision, Michelle said.

“It’s hard to make your mind sometimes,” Ilene admitted.

While tasting, they try to write comments on each entrant’s score sheets, saying things they liked or noted.

Tasting desserts all day isn’t as easy as it sounds, they say.

“One day we sat here and tasted for five hours. All you want is salad afterwards,” laughed Michelle.

Both enjoy being part of a community event, giving back to the community, and they also like to see what other cooks are doing.

“To me, this, it’s Americana,” Ilene said.