There is a Green Hill

Being in a BYU single's ward as I am, and seeing as most of us don't have a whole lot of family close by, we don't have Family Home Evening (FHE) with actual family, but rather are split up into groups with a "mom" and "dad" called to preside over the group, and make sure there is some form of organization and structure to the weekly gatherings. In my ward we meet all together once a month, split up and go to the Bishopric's homes once a month, and the other Mondays we just meet as individual groups (we have 4 in our ward).

This month the FHE gurus decided to have a bake-off, with a homemade Thai dinner for the winning group. Sister Sorenson is Thai and cooks some amazing food! I have been privileged enough to have recently partaken of her cooking, so I wasn't necessarily dead-set on winning. To give other people a chance to experience the goodness and all. And I just really like feeding people, so I went a little overboard as usual. I made a chocolate cake that I put green shag frosting on, as well as some frosting daisies that I had left over from a different cake project. I titled it "There is a Green Hill". I made some tarts with some excess jam from last week, and an almond crust. There was the old standby of cinnamon rolls that I've made often enough that I don't even need the recipe anymore, and I threw in some cream puffs I had made for a dinner I went to on Sunday. Amy Norton and I were the only ones for our group that made anything, and there was lots of stuff there, some of which was really prettily presented, but we're both good cooks so we felt pretty confident in our offerings. Amy brought a chocolate-raspberry mousse cheesecake thingy and home-made thin mints. Awesome!

So we had Bishop Sorenson, President Baker, and Bro. and Sister Andersen judging the competition. They had official judging hats to make sure that everyone knew they were serious about the whole thing. And they were. Very serious while judging. After they judged presentation, difficulty, and originality they got to taste everything. And so did we. I especially enjoyed the lemon meringue pie, and the assortment of chocolate goodies brought. Oh, and this raspberry cheesecake thing with a fresh raspberry sauce to drizzle over it. Yum!!!

We were all biting our nails, but they finally tallied up the results and the overall single winner was Anamae Anderson who made one of the fantastic lemon meringue pies. But there were two entries that won the contest for their entire group. And they were.... (drumroll please)... The Green Hill cake (also referred to as the Grassy Knoll) and the jam tarts! That's right. I totally won for my group! It was awesome. Anamae gets to come with our group when we get dinner since she won for herself. I consider my self-awarded "Domestic Goddess" title officially defended!