NARBERTH Food Festival is to whisk Pembrokeshire’s amateur bakers into a frenzy of cake making this autumn by teaming up with a Welsh butter producer and launching a Great British Bake Off-style competition.

The initiative is the idea of the Festival’s patron of seven years, celebrity chef Angela Gray, whose family produce butter under the Castle Dairies brand.

Competitors who sign up for the Bake-Off challenge will be given a block of Castle Dairies butter when they register on the first morning of the two-day festival, September 28th, and are expected to include that butter in their baking.

They will return with their creations the following day, to be judged under Angela’s expert eye.

“Baking brings people together and I loved the idea of using local produce coupled with the tradition of baking to add a new dimension to the Festival,’’ says Angela, who earned her first pay packet from packing butter at the family dairy in Caerphilly.

There will be a two categories - one for young people aged 16 years and under and the other for 17-year-old cooks and beyond.

With some exceptional prizes on offer, the competition is expected to draw a high number of entries.

The winner of the junior class will participate in a cookery class at the Angela Gray Cookery School while in the adult section there is a one-day course at the school up for grabs.

Winners in both sections will receive a bag of Castle Dairies goodies and a cookery book signed by Angela.

Entries can be sweet or savoury - cakes, pastry and bread-making, Angela explains. “It might be an invention of their own or a family recipe and can be made in the comfort and familiar sUrroundings of their own kitchen.’’

Registration is from 10am on September 28th and entries must be delivered to the Festival’s workshop marquee by midday on September 29th where they will be displayed in readiness for judging.

Narberth Food Festival, now in its 21st year, will once more take place on the Town Moor.

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