Just like their great-grandmother, Jade and Ella McDonald are keen home bakers and are gearing up for the Echuca Moama Show junior baking categories. Photos: Emily Donohoe.
Photo by
Emily Donohoe
Recipe books are being dusted off ahead of the Echuca Moama Show, set for November 8 and 9.
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Vying for the prestigious Keith and Eunice Hart Perpetual Bake-Off honour, bakers will be tasked with preparing the best sponge cake this year.
At last year’s show, Gwen McDonald served up the best chocolate cake, taking out the $50 prize and adding her name to the shield.
Mrs McDonald’s handicraft skills also won her a sash for a hat she created.
Gwen’s great-granddaughters Ella and Jade hold her prizes, and granddaughter-in-law Brooke McDonald shows off the hat Gwen created.
While this year, Mrs McDonald is unable to compete, her family will proudly represent the McDonald name.
Mrs McDonald’s great-granddaughters Ella and Jade McDonald regularly enter baked goods and crafts into the junior show categories.
The girls will once again bake up a storm, and their mother, Brooke McDonald, will try her hand at her grandmother-in-law’s sponge cake recipe.
“We’re yet to find anyone that beats ma-ma’s baking yet, have we?” Brooke said.
“Since ma-ma can’t bake this year, I thought I might try and bake ... get her famous recipe and see if I can pull it off.
“I think it will be a lot of practising.”
Ella and Jade cooking up a storm, with pancakes and honey joys on their after school menu.
When Brooke isn’t recipe testing, Ella and Jade will be the ones in the kitchen.
Ella is the McDonald family’s ‘pancake master’, another recipe passed down, while Jade prefers preparing savoury dishes, such as sushi.
The girls’ father, Matthew McDonald, also dabbled in show entries growing up.
“My husband’s mother, Lorraine, she enters stuff into the show as well,” Brooke said.
“She taught Ella to make the pancakes ... when (Matthew) was younger, Lorraine did used to enter them in; they made pancakes and stuff like that, and he had a rooster.
“The rooster used to win things in the show when he was probably 11 years old, so there’s a strong history.”
Ella will be eyeing off the pancake category at this year’s show.
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