Wait is nearly over for this year's Golden Spurtle reveal
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The spurtles will keep turning as the organisers prepare to announce the winners of the ‘Virtual Spurtle' competition on World Porridge Day.
The World Porridge Making Championships is not able to go-ahead this year in Carrbridge as usual due to the Covid-19 restrictions.
So back in June, the organisers put out a call for video entries for this year’s online speciality porridge competition, with a plan to share the 10 best recipe videos on the Golden Spurtle website and on social media.
Competitors were asked to submit a video of themselves creating a sweet or savoury dish with oatmeal.
Entries have since been received from porridge fans from Lithuania, Catalonia England, Canada Germany and. of course, Scotland.
Six judges marked the videos on five criteria including 'virtual taste', appearance, execution, originality and flair.
Entries included a range of sweet and savoury recipes.
Fruit-based porridges were by far the most popular, but other dishes included traditional oatmeal brose, an intriguing French dish using oats as a flour, and a coffee-based dish from Scotland, as well as an extremely complicated meal from Canada with seven different components.
The 10 winning videos will be shown on the hour, every hour from 9am to 6pm next Saturday (October 10).
This date is particularly significant as it is also World Porridge Day which celebrates the popularity of porridge and raises awareness and funds for Mary’s Meals.
The Scots charity provides porridge to more than 1.5 million children in 18 countries every day at school.
From the 10 winning entries the judges will be announcing a winner and a runner up.
And to add some bite to the big day, they have revealed a single point separates the two top spots.
Charlie Miller, a member of Carrbridge Community Council who organise the competition, said: “The World Porridge Making Championships has been going since 1994 and we didn’t want to just let it go for 2020.
"We were delighted to attract entries from around the world for our ‘Virtual Spurtle’ competition, and we hope that we will be able to delight porridge fans from across the globe with the 10 winning videos and accompanying recipes which will feature on our website goldenspurtle.com and on our Facebook page."
Hamlyns of Scotland, the Banffshire-based producers of Hamlyns Scottish Oatmeal and Porridge Oats, are continuing to sponsor the competition.
Managing director Alan Meikle said: “We were delighted with the virtual format that the organising committee came up with for 2020, and we’re really looking forward to watching the videos on 10th October, and hopefully getting some new ideas to try ourselves.”
