This Friday, catch local baking champ Eileen Gannon on Netflix’s new “Blue Ribbon Baking Championship.” (Photo: Netflix)
Writer: Karla Walsh
When Eileen Gannon took home her first Iowa State Fair blue ribbon for cornmeal muffins, at the age of 12, she never could have imagined where her desserts would take her. Today, she’s racked up more than 600 culinary awards and founded her own award-winning chocolate sauces, under the label Sunday Night Foods. You can find all of them — including sea salt chocolate, dark chocolate orange and (my favorite) dark chocolate peppermint — at Hy-Vee, Fareway, Gateway Market and online.
Starting Friday, you can find Gannon herself right in your living room. She’s one of 10 contestants on Netflix’s new “Blue Ribbon Baking Championship” who are mixing, baking and decorating their way to become “America’s best baker.”
Gannon recently told dsm that each episode involves two challenges: an hourlong skills showcase called the “fast fair” and an elimination challenge, both of which are judged by “Semi-Homemade Cooking” star Sandra Lee, former White House pastry chef Bill Yosses and baker/author/TV host Bryan Ford. The “cheftestants” share their desserts in a fair-style tent, where the judges know exactly who made what.
“The most memorable part was fear,” Gannon said. “You’re only as good as your last bake.”
While she can’t share many details about the show itself, Gannon did give us the dish about one of the desserts she made. The test: Take a dessert that previously won you a blue ribbon and then give it a twist. Gannon cleverly transformed her blue ribbon banana cream pie into a towering cake, with layers of banana cake, some crumbled graham crackers, banana pastry cream, fresh bananas and stabilized whip cream, all decorated with Swiss meringue. (Swoon!)
We’ll have to wait until Friday to watch the first results, but in the meantime, you can admire Gannon’s skills in person at the Iowa State Fair. She plans to teach four workshops that require no reservations or tickets (other than the fair’s general admission fee):
- 11:30 a.m. Aug. 8: How to Make a Championship Cake (Elwell Family Food Center)
- 3 p.m. Aug. 10: Championship Cakes and Cookies (Maytag Family Theaters)
- 11 a.m. Aug. 11: Blue Ribbon Pies and Tarts (Maytag Family Theaters)
- 7 p.m. Aug. 15: Creative Cocktails and Appetizers (Maytag Family Theaters)
Can’t make it to one of her workshops? We have some sweet news for you: She was kind enough to share five tricks to level-up even the most humble bakes.
- Go nuts. A mere 1 teaspoon of almond extract is all that stands between you and turning a box of white cake mix into something that tastes like a classic wedding cake.
- Bring on the buzz. No one will guess it’s a boxed brownie mix if you stir 1 teaspoon of instant coffee powder into the batter.
- Keep cool. Always chill your cookie dough after mixing. Since it’s hard to muscle your way through rock-hard chilled cookie dough to portion it out, use a cookie scoop to make dough balls immediately after mixing. Then cover the dough balls, chill them overnight and bake them — or freeze them to bake later.
- Break the rules and underbake the cake. Set a timer to check doneness at 10% shy of the lowest time the recipe suggests. (If it recommends 20 to 24 minutes, for example, start checking in at 18.) Insert a toothpick 2 inches from the edge of the pan, then slide it out. You want just a few crumbs sticking. The middle should still be a little underdone, because the cake will finish baking as it cools. “I’m a firm believer that all the flavor gets baked out in the last five minutes of baking,” Gannon said. “If there’s no moisture, the cake can’t convey the flavor.”
- Bake it easy. For a dessert that looks gourmet but almost couldn’t be easier to build, Gannon recommends her three-ingredient Chocolate Tart. To make it, fill a store-bought pastry crust with a filling made from a jar of Sunday Night Foods dessert sauce and one egg. Place it in an oven preheated to 400 F, turn off the heat and let the tart hang out in the oven for 10 minutes. And voilà: a chocolate triumph.
