The winners of the 2017 cheesecake competition. From left to right: Carol Berch, Katy Rohr and Kristen Chilson.
Some participants in the 2017 cheesecake competition. From left to right: Beth Rohr, Kristen Chilson and Katy Rohr.
The entries for the 2017 cheesecake competition.
After attending her first Toledo Cheese Days celebration, Jamie Cummings decided to add another layer to the town’s love of cheese. Three years ago, Cummings gathered some friends and created the Toledo Cheesecake Club for anyone who loves to bake and eat cheesecake.
“We had lived here about a year and been through a Cheese Days and I was really bummed,” Cummings said. “Most of these small town festivals have some sort of baking competition that goes along with it thematically. We didn’t have one, and that made me sad.”
Along with the club, Cummings wanted to have an annual cheesecake competition for anyone to enter their original recipes and compete for a prize. This will be the first year the competition won’t be during Cheese Days, but now all the club members can focus solely on the competition, Cummings said.
“I’m excited to be bringing more cheese-themed stuff year-round,” Cummings laughed. “I’m glad that it’s not just focused on Cheese Days.”
The club meets every other month at either the Morgan Arts Centre or Camp Singing Wind. Every meeting has a different theme of cheesecakes allowing members to try new things and get creative with their baking. Some meeting themes include savory, holiday and farmers’ cheesecakes. In the past, members have tried making a nacho cheesecake and a smoked salmon cheesecake.
“We get a lot of weird stuff that shows up. It’s very experimental,” Cummings said.
Twice a year, the club will have someone who bakes professionally speak at their meeting to talk about topics like different baking techniques, how to get better results while baking and how to make foreign cheesecakes.
“It’s surprisingly awesome and it’s surprisingly popular,” Cummings said. “We have good speakers. It’s this robust little thing out here.”
Though anyone can attend a meeting or submit a cheesecake in the competition, Cummings encourages people to join the club by paying the $10 yearly membership fee, especially because only members are allowed to taste during competitions. This year, the competition will be separated into two groups: fruit and non-fruit.
A panel of judges decide first, second and third place in each category and the members at large pick the people’s choice winner. The prizes for winners range from cake stands to serving sets. People from around the Pacific Northwest have joined in on the competition, so it’s not just a Toledo thing, Cummings said.
“If anyone wants to come and join the club, they’re welcome to judge as well,” Cummings said. “It’s honestly a lot of cheesecake to go through. We get pretty good turnout for eating it, which means you got a solid plate of a lot of cheesecakes to try.”
The winner of the first competition now runs Riverhouse Bake Shop in Toledo, which came about because of the good response she got from the competition, Cummings said. This year, Cummings is entering a no-bake cheesecake and her husband, Ethan Siegel, is competing for the first time. There is a good mix of men and women in the club, as well as a wide age range, Cummings said. There is a grandmother and granddaughter team that each enters a cheesecake in the competition but works together on their recipes.
The club asks that people submitting a cheesecake for the competition bring one cheesecake cut into sample pieces and one optional cheesecake for the auction. Proceeds of the auction will go to a food forest that is under development in town for trees and bushes that anybody in the community can harvest, Cummings said.
“If we’re going to eat a bunch of junk food and put that out into the world, we figured we’d put something nutritious out there as well,” Cummings said.
There are no entry fees for the competition and entry forms are available on the Toledo Cheesecake Club Facebook page. People can enter the competition the day of the event as well. The club also asks all participants to submit their cheesecake recipes so that they can compile a cookbook of all the cheesecakes made for the competition. Cummings said she is always eager to see what people’s imaginations come up with when it comes to baking cheesecake.
“I’m really excited to see what people come up with,” Cummings said. “They have some fantastic ideas and it’s always a surprise what we get.”
Since starting the Cheesecake Club, Cummings and Siegel have begun to try cheesecakes wherever they travel. Most recently they tried cheesecake in Iceland. Cummings hopes more people continue to join in on their love for cheesecake.
“I wouldn’t have said that I was a huge cheesecake person before, but this has kind of turned everybody that we know into one,” Cummings said. “It’s so silly, I love it.”
Cheesecake Competition
Saturday, April 20 at 2 p.m.
Morgan Arts Centre
190 Plomondon Rd.
Toledo, WA 98519
