California Raisins Bloggers Baking Challenge ; Champion

Hey, y'all. This is a super duper late post I'm writing about, but if you follow me on Instagram, you'd know that I recently joined a baking challenge organized by California Raisins. And since it's a team challenge, I couldn't think of anyone better than to be partners with my twin, Miriam! We decided to call ourselves The Baker Babes, cause we both love to bake during our free time.

Why I joined this contest? Well, it was called California Raisins Bloggers Baking Challenge, and I realized that I haven't had the time to spend some time with my darling Miriam, so I said why not! I'll be honest that we both joined this challenge just for the fun of it, with no intentions of even winning. Haha. But up to today, I still can't believe that we both won champions of the day!

Upon arriving, we had a small introduction by the representatives of California Raisins on the challenge where we were given an hour to prepare our dish. I have to say that the experience of being in a culinary kitchen was a once in a lifetime experience, and I'm glad that I had that experience with Miriam. We also had the head chef of Berjaya Times Square Culinary School present to judge on our dishes, and that really hit me and Miriam man. We literally felt like what have we gotten ourselves into. haha.

So since the challenge requires us to be creative with California Raisins, we decided to make Bread Pudding and called it The Loaf Potion, because you'll fall in love with it at the first bite. Corny stuff me and Miriam would usually do. haha. As much as Bread Pudding may sound boring to you, what makes our bread pudding different is that we incorporated California raisins, walnuts, strawberries, and white chocolate chips! We minus out on the sugar portion of the ingredient since the raisins were good enough to provide natural sweetness.

And tadaa, not that we knew how it would turn out, but if you ask me, it looks pretty good, no? Haha. And believe it or not, we didn't even practice together on preparing this, so it was merely like our first time baking together. We sent our dishes off to the judges for judging, and OMG the pressure was surreal! With 5 minutes left, we were both rushing in and out to check on our bread pudding from time to time. Not to forget that we had to make sure that our presentation was good enough for photos.

The judging session was by far the scariest part throughout the competition. We both kept our fingers crossed during the judging session, and surprisingly the judges loved our Bread Pudding! With our thinking caps on, imagine that we had to be creative on explaining about bread pudding. Never knew describing on how a dish is presented can be so challenging, but I admit that it was really fun! Miriam's heart was practically racing, while I was the chill one, cause I'll be honest that I don't work well when I'm pressured. haha.

I guess the winning points of our dish would be that we made side raisin caramel dip and added a scoop of vanilla ice cream too. We were also the only team who prepared bread pudding, I guess that made it a plus point to the judges for being different. The chef loved that we gave him 3 different flavor combinations in our dish, so thankfully that worked out pretty well.

You would know why we felt like we would win, cause just look at all these dishes prepared by the other teams? Everything looks mouthwatering! Too bad we didn't get to taste any of their dishes, but from the looks of it, everyone did put a lot of effort in preparing their dishes. But in conclusion, everyone is a winner since everyone got to bring back a consolation prize for being a part of the challenge. Congratulations to all the winners!

I guess it's true what they say that when you bake with love, people can taste the love you put into your dish. *giggles* Still can't believe that we won champion of the day, and to be honest, who knew that you can prepare so may types of dishes with Californian Raisins? It was an amazing experience, and it's great to see bloggers baking together in one kitchen. hehe. And Miriam, if you're reading this, I'm not going to forget what I said to you. Better start planning to open your own cafe babe :* Well, that's all for now, let me know what you think of our presentation and if you have your own recipe incorporating California raisins, do share!

Sara xx