INSPIRE: Albany Agricultural Show baking section’s champion family says bring on this year’s competition

An Albany family have been stalwart competitors in the baking section of the Albany Agricultural Show for more than six decades, and they’re not ready to give up their crown yet, with three generations entering the 2025 competition. The Albany Agricultural Show celebrated its 128th year in 2024, and veteran baker Dorothy Elliott has been winning rosettes in its baking competitions for more than half of those years. Dorothy, affectionately known to many around Albany as Dot, has been baking cakes for the Albany Agricultural Show since she was 16 years old, entering her first bake in 1957. Since then, she has taken home rosettes and trophies in a range of culinary classes for her sponge cakes, fruit cakes and slices, and has passed her love of baking and her competitive nature down to her daughter Leanne Dowsett. Leanne is also a keen cook, known in the Albany Show displays for her chocolate cakes and fruit cakes, as is her husband Colin. The Dowsett’s home kitchen in Robinson is full of baking tins and cake ingredients days out from the Albany Agricultural Show that opens on Friday, and when Colin opens the oven to take a surreptitious peek at his steadily-baking masterpiece, out wafts the sweet, citrus smell of fruit cake. All three bake their own version of the fruit cake with a similar recipe, attempting each year to outdo each other on show day. But Dot will not be unseated so easily, and the matriarch has entered a cake in the show almost every year since 1957, some years putting in more than a dozen entries, racking up stacks of rosettes and more than a few kitchen secrets. “My mother encouraged me to bake my first fruitcake and enter it in the show, and I’ve been baking on and off since, with jams and preserves in years past, when we had the Vacola bottles of fruit preserves, and in latter years, my speciality has been sponge,” Dot said. “I’ve been trying to teach my daughter how to make it after me for 20 years, but I still haven’t succeeded in teaching her. “When I was married and had the two girls, I did slices and jams, preserves, all sorts of things, I’ve had sometimes 30 entries across mixed categories, all in the cooking and preserve section, but as I’ve got older I’ve had to cut things down a bit.” She said it used to be a balancing act getting all her entries ready in the weeks leading up to show day, with cakes and slices needing to be ready ahead of time but still fresh enough for the judges on Thursday night, when the winners are decided. Colin is also competitive in the fruit cake class, settling on his speciality after trying his hand at other bakes including cream puffs, and jokes that it was Leanne who inadvertently got him into the kitchen for the show. “I think it was the year after we got married, Leanne was getting her cake ready for the show and I kept coming in to see what she was doing and asking questions,” he said. “She got so annoyed with me eventually she told me in no uncertain terms to ‘put your own cake in’, so I did, and I won the category three years in a row the first three years I entered.” Leanne said Friday morning is always a rush of anticipation as competitors get down to the show when doors open at 9am on Friday morning to see what cakes have been crowned the year’s winners. The good-natured competition has spread around the neighbourhood in recent years, with neighbours and friends entering with their own bakes on the odd occasion, and into the next generation of the Doswett family, with Leanne and Colin’s daughter Ashleigh Woollett taking her own rosettes in years past for her chocolate cakes and son Laurie Dowsett entering his first sourdough loaf this year. All three bakers have fond memories from years at the show, with Dot recalling when the then-Prince Charles visited the Albany Show in 2015, and the first year her granddaughter put an entry into the baking section, keeping it a secret from her family. “One year Ashleigh put a cake in without telling us, she won first prize and we didn’t even know she had entered until we went down on show day,” Dot said. Leanne said the family rivalry had certainly revved up over the years, but the annual event was one that ultimately brought them closer, and one she felt the Albany community also continued to support in droves. “Everyone we know, they always go down to the cooking section and have a look at who won this year, find our cakes and make sure they’re there,” Leanne said. “We have to keep entering because everyone would be upset if we didn’t.” The Albany Agricultural Show opens at 9am on Friday morning, with sideshow alley staying open until 10pm, and reopens at 9am on Saturday morning for a second full day of festivities.