Randy gave it a moment's thought, shrugged, and finished off the last of the fish pie.

After Barry they were presented with a pepper cake from Gloria.

Randy greatly approved--while Anthony did not.

The next set of goods were colorful chocolate cupcakes from Angeline, Dr. Bronson's homemade apple pie, Kiri Blackwelder's snickerdoodle cookies and contest was finished with Erika Erickson's special pineapple upside down cake.

Randy graded the entries carefully, making sure not to let his personal tastes get in the way of fair and objective judgment--and then he was presented with pineapple upside down cake. It was everything he could ever have wanted from a dessert...

Erika clung to Maxwell's arm, "Ohhh their tastin' it! Ah canna look! Whit if no one likes it?!"

"Well, someone sure likes it," Maxwell pointed out, nodding toward Randy as he furiously wrote down high scores while licking the last traces of cake from his finger.

Ericka giggled, "That does make me feel better,"

Then it was time for all of the judges to combine their scorecards and decide on winners... Randy was already quite certain of who he wanted to win.

The contestants sat on pins and needles as they waited for the judges to decide.

In the end, it was the cheesecake which came away with first place, though the others all received various prizes for more specific categories.

Marie proudly showed her grandfather her ribbon and the table was cleared and set up for the next round....

Anthony was excited; maybe there would be muffins in this round!

And indeed the very first entry was spiced banana nut muffins made by Alicia Harimura.

They weren't the sort of muffins he had been hoping for, but Anthony couldn't begrudge them a good rating.
Randy finished his muffin and stole what was left of Anthony's...

The next batch were some slightly hard, very dry, re-warmed store packaged oatmeal cookies with globs of cheap icing on them. Skeezy hoped people would be convinced he'd actually baked them.