{"id":3122,"date":"2016-02-08T13:59:24","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T12:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/?p=3122"},"modified":"2017-05-20T11:33:54","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T10:33:54","slug":"judging-free-from-food-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/judging-free-from-food-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Ginger is the New Chocolate: Judging at the Free From Food Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"judging-cake\"<\/p>\n

What do you think about gluten free cake—and how do you think you\u2019d feel about eating 32 different cakes or biscuits in an afternoon?<\/p>\n

I was excited to head to London last week to be on the judging panel for the Free From Food Awards<\/a> again—the tea-time session: cakes and biscuits.<\/p>\n

In one sense it was an easier session to judge this year than last, because there were fewer entries (last year<\/a> we ate through 55 cakes…) and no chocolate brownies. I like a chocolate brownie (though I like my mother\u2019s version<\/a> best), but there were an awful lot of chocolate entries last year…<\/p>\n

This year the key flavour was ginger, to the astonishment of an American judge \u2013 apparently ginger cake and ginger biscuits aren\u2019t such a big thing in the US. <\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t think that gluten free cake had trends and fashions, but it really does, and clearly ginger is A Thing at the moment. And thank goodness there are trends: I\u2019m delighted to see a trend towards gluten free celebration cakes and sharing cakes available in supermarkets. Sharing food, particularly at celebrations, matters; and not just to children.<\/p>\n

Overall, of course, the trend is for gluten free cake to get better \u2013 which makes it harder to distinguish the front-runners at a judging event. There are always a few of the old-fashioned offerings that just don\u2019t make the grade in terms of taste and texture; but there are an increasing number of innovative brands \u2013 often the smaller manufacturers – that are really trying to offer us something new and better.<\/p>\n

And that makes judging hard, and means that the judging panel gets increasingly picky. There\u2019s certainly a lot of debate and discussion about everything from the taste and texture to the ingredients and the labelling. We taste blind (so we don\u2019t know who has made any of it, and we\u2019re not swayed by any branding) but we are given a list of ingredients, and told what claims to be allergy-free are made by each product. And these are taken very seriously, and discussed in detail. <\/p>\n

What is better, a cake that makes every effort to be allergy-free (meaning it can be eaten by lots of different people) or one that a particular group (say, coeliacs) has been asking manufacturers to make for years and which is technically difficult to make?<\/p>\n

And there was lots of discussion about the difficulties of mass-producing cake, and of making it available across the country. One of the judges in the session I went to works in free from for a large supermarket, and spoke about how difficult it is to get shelf space for free from foods, or to get manufacturers to switch to making foods free from (even when it would only take a tiny change). That was fascinating; we may complain about the range of foods available to us in supermarkets, but someone, behind the scenes, has been working very hard to get those onto the shelves. And there was a great deal of discussion about whether those shelves should be dedicated free from shelves, or whether free from food should be available alongside \u2018normal\u2019 food.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always entertaining to be on the judging panel, and we all had our own favourites. At the end there’s a big reveal, so the judges can find out who makes which cake, and make notes on which to buy (or recommend that you should try). <\/p>\n

No clues here about which were the winning products (it’s a secret!), but my personal favourites included:<\/p>\n