A GAWLER South resident has taken on the best home cooks in the state and won, winning the most outstanding exhibitor in the open cooking class at last week’s Royal Adelaide Show.
Suphaluck Ongchareon, known to her friends as ‘JJ’, was competing in her first Adelaide Show when she won two first place, two second place and three third place ribbons for her array of baked goods.
Her first ever show was last year’s Gawler Show, where she received a prize for all her entries for her cooking before entering more country shows around the region and winning more accolades along the way.
She was shocked to have so much success at her first ever Adelaide Show given the quality of cooks she competed against.
“At the Royal Show there are a lot of conditions, for example you can’t use sticks to test if the food is done, you need to be able to tell just from touching your finger on top,” she said.
“I had to study, lecture myself and practice and practice to get good enough.
“People told me ‘JJ, I don’t think you can win anything because there is a lot of strong bakers from all around South Australia’.
“I said ‘I don’t mind’, I thought at least I can show the people and people get to taste it, that would’ve been made me happy.”
Originally from Thailand, Mrs Ongchareon had never cooked with an oven until she moved to Australia in 2012.
Not long after she started a Facebook page in Thai and English detailing her progress as a baker, which now has 45,000 page ‘likes’.
“Baking is like meditating for me, it’s relaxing and I love baking and sharing lovely food with my friends,” she said.
“I don’t actually like to eat that much, but I like to take food to my friends.
“The first time I ever baked was making muffins with a packet mix, and I was amazed as to how all these things can come together to make something like that.
“It inspired me to learn from YouTube and Google, they were like my universities.
“I read before bed, and sometimes I’ll see a recipe I like and just get up and bake it straight away.”
Mrs Ongchareon added her favourite things to bake include fruit and vegetable-based treats like orange cake, banana bread and rhubarb cake.
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