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RnQ
Scores 180 in Dessert at
21st Jack Daniel's World Championship
Invitational Barbecue
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And yes,
there's a story behind it -- you knew there would be.
We'd arrived at Jack Daniel's Hollow late Wednesday night,
and set up on Thursday. During the day, Mike from
Wild Hogs in Colorado told us that the previous year's
Grand Champion, 4 Legs Up, was having a potluck that night
-- they'd supply the prime rib, and attendees were to
bring a side dish. We don't have to be told twice to
show up for prime rib! We wondered what the heck
we'd bring, though -- it's all we can do to get four meats
in a box, we don't do all that well on bringing other
food.
So we skated off to Woodard's grocery store, and cruised
up and down the shelves looking for something
promising. I decided that the go-to solution would
be to make a layered dessert, so I got a bunch of yummy
things, hauled them back to camp, threw them into a foil
pan and trotted off to eat the best prime rib I've ever
had, bar none.
When dessert time came, the first person to try the stuff
in the foil pan (wasn't that Hundred-Dollar Bill?) rocked
right back in his chair, and then went back for
seconds. Other tasters had their eyes roll back in
their heads, and the consensus was that it was pretty
fine.
On Friday, no fewer than five people came by and asked me
if I was going to enter that dessert on Saturday, and I
got to thinking that maybe there was a message I should be
getting. But I was set up for a different dessert
entirely, and I had nothing to stage it in, and I hemmed
and hawed back and forth all afternoon. Finally VQ
said "Go with your gut," and we raced out to the
hardware store to buy JD glasses to put it in, and back to
Woodard's for more ingredients.
On Saturday, there was no time to think about dessert any
more -- it was meat time! We got all our entries in,
and then had a bit less than half an hour to throw
together the dessert. I assembly-lined the
ingredients in, put them on the tray, and hoped I'd get it
to the turn-in table on time without slipping in the mud
on the way! Somebody caught me in the chute looking
like a hunted animal.
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When awards started and the
desserts were being called, I heard increasingly elaborate
baked-things-with-chocolate being named and figured we'd
finished out of the top 10. When the first-place
dessert was called, it didn't quite register -- VQ jumped
up and shouted, and he swears I was still sitting there
starting to clap for the winner.
We went up and collected our little Jack and rosette, and
the announcer said that the dessert had received a perfect
score of 180 -- all six judges had given it the highest
possible marks in each attribute of appearance, taste and
texture. When I was asked what I'd made, I had to
give tribute to its origins, because I would never have
thought to enter it without the kind praise of those who
had eaten it, so I named it "Mr. Daniel's Favorite
Potluck Dessert". And that's the story of how
an improvised foil pan of poundcake, apples in spiced
caramel-cream-
Jack sauce, whipped cream and crushed shortbread became...
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The Most
Perfect BBQ Dessert In The World. |
One of our BBQ
Brethren, Bbq_Bubba, caught the dessert call on video and
has placed it on Youtube -- you can see it HERE.
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