Sue Rogers has been generous enough to share her experience of entering a competition which I hope will inspire others to have a go and share their stories of their ventures with us.

I saw a competition  featured in the Good Housekeeping magazine, to  design a recipe using Quaker Oats. I spent a long time mulling over what I could do, then whilst swimming one Sunday morning decided to go for mango muffins with an oat crumble. I have never seen   mango muffins and thought that a crumble on top would be a little different.

I spent a long time trilling the recipe. It wasn’t as easy as I thought, as I struggled to get a strong mango flavour. Each time I made the muffins, the mango flavour disappeared and came across just as a sweet fruity flavour. I tried tinned mangoes, dried mangoes, pureed tinned mangoes and finally settled with fresh mango. I realised perhaps why there hadn’t been many other mango muffin recipes made. I wanted to obtain  a summer/Caribbean flavour so added ginger and coconut to the crumble and hazelnuts to the cakes to give a different  texture. My original aim had been to make the muffins healthy, and I had reduced the butter in the crumble. However, when the muffins rose in the oven, the crumble fell off, so it was back to the drawing board to redesign the crumble. I finally sent my recipe off, then got an e mail in June saying that my recipe had been shortlisted to the last six. I received a beautiful food hamper, courtesy of Quakers, which was hand delivered.

I didn’t expect to win, but was thrilled to receive a phone call saying that I had come first.  I had to travel to London, to the Good Housekeeping institute kitchens in July, and was taken out for a lovely lunch at an exclusive restaurant. I then went to the GH Kitchens and in front of a team of 10 people(editors/art editors/photographers/assistants)  from Quakers and Good Housekeeping, had to make the muffins, whilst being photographed at every stage ( I had to take the muffins out of the oven several times in order to put them back in again as the photographer hadn’t taken a photo).

The best part then was to come, as the photographer spent over 1 hour doing a photo shoot of the muffins, for the November issue of Good Housekeeping. Amazingly they had done the Christmas shoot the day before.

Watching the photo being built up was truly fascinating.  They started with the muffins, then put them on a cake stand, then added a purple mat under them, then broke a few crumbs off, then  put a pile of plates in the background, then put a muffin on the plates, then a blue serviette under the plates. I had always thought that food in magazines was altered for the photo, but it isn’t. The image that they wanted to portray was of a warm November evening, yet when I had planned my entry I was thinking more of a Caribbean holiday!

I feel so proud that my recipe is now being circulated in 400 000 magazines around the country. I have always enjoyed altering and adapting recipes. I now work as a food tech teacher to try to give my students the confidence to start doing this. I have taught many pupils through APEX and hope that this will inspire others to have a go!