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Tensions rise in pastry bake-off

Edward ScownMidwest Times
Homestead Hampers' Goat pies are a regional favourite, but can they impress in Sydney?
Camera IconHomestead Hampers' Goat pies are a regional favourite, but can they impress in Sydney? Credit: Mundillya Homestead/Facebook

Two Mid West bakeries are battling it out for the highest honour which can be bestowed on a pastry peddler in the Great Aussie Pie and Sausage Roll Competition.

The national competition has drawn more than 1500 entries, with the Mid West sending two champions.

Northampton’s Shearing Shed Cafe will compete for the sausage roll title, and Carnarvon’s Homestead Hampers will put up its famous goat pies.

The pies are a family creation from Meedo Station operators Chris and Tim Higham. They’ve run cattle and goats on their Gascoyne pasture for 16 years.

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It was only six years ago Mrs Higham made her first pie, but it has since become her most lucrative endeavour.

Shearing Shed Cafe owner Nic Anderson is fresh from winning best vanilla slice in WA. As with the slice, she said there was no secret ingredient to her sausage roll.

She’s putting up the classics: beef, bacon and cheese, and spinach and ricotta.

“Just good old-fashioned sausage rolls, the way Nan used to make them,” she said.

WA competitors face a hurdle, though — the competition is being held in Sydney, so bakeries must cook, freeze and freight their goods overnight to judges some 4000km away.

To add insult to injury, Ms Anderson said the freight company she was planning to use had gone on strike, so she was heading to Perth to put it on interstate freight.

“I’ve always wanted to enter, and I wasn’t going to let them stop me entering this year.”

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