Baking? I'm shaking

''You could always cook another one,'' she says. ''Or fill it with icing.''

I go the second option and at that point give up on my hopes for the cake. It looks okay when it's finished. The top has flattened out quite neatly, but I know once it's sliced I'll be revealed for the fake I am.

Instead, I concentrate on my slices. I'm pretty happy with them - a passionfruit slice and a raspberry walnut slice from the Women's Weekly. I get out a ruler and measure them before cutting, 6cm x 4cm, precisely. I try a few different presentation techniques. They look quite pretty on the foil-covered board (and I've followed a You Tube video to do that well), all yellow and pink and neatly arranged.

But the cake, which is still not quite cool enough to ice, is sitting there like the elephant in the room. You can't bake, it's saying. Just look at me, what do you think you're doing?

The past three hours in the kitchen have been the most stressful three hours of my kitchen life. There's been nothing enjoyable about it (well, apart from eating the leftover condensed milk from the passionfruit slice). Who would have thought that baking for competition would be so different from baking for consumption? Do my kids care if my chocolate cakes sink in the middle? Not at all, that hollow means extra icing. But will the judges care? Oh yes.

Welcome to the arena of competitive cooking. Rather than writing a story about other entrants in the cookery section of the Royal Canberra Show, some genius (okay it was me) came up with the idea of actually entering. My colleague Claire Low and I decide to give it a go. We both experience beginner's angst, not knowing the tricks of the trade.

But I've got an ace up my sleeve. I've managed to snare an interview with Merle Parrish, the woman who charmed the MasterChef crowd last series and stumped contestant Billy Law with her peach blossom cake. Parrish is an award-winning cook, has blue ribbons from Sydney's Royal Easter Show, the Cudal Show and countless Country Women's Association cook-offs. Surely she'll give me the inside edge. She's just released a cookbook, Merle's Kitchen, a wonderfully nostalgic collection of recipes, some of which were her grandmother's and her mother's, and there are many award-winners among them.

I tell her I'm going to cook her passionfruit slice and Donna Latter's chocolate cake, named in memory of a CWA stalwart, the cake with which Parrish herself won the 2008 Donna Latter Memorial Prize in a CWA competition - ''the biggest thrill of my cooking life''. (Wish I could say, right back at you Merle, but, honestly, thrill doesn't even come into the equation.)

Parrish says the main thing is to carefully follow the recipe.

''Measure the ingredients out exactly as the recipe tells you,'' she says. ''If you don't add the proper balance of ingredients, your cake won't be balanced … if the ingredients aren't balanced it can be soggy and sink in the middle.''

I wonder later whether I need to know more about the chemistry of cooking. Pam Beesley and Cheryl Grgurinovic have been entering the Canberra show for years, and have won a couple of ribbons. They've also learned about the chemistry of baking, and have picked up tips from the judging sessions, where the judge and stewards explain their decisions to the crowd. This year's judge, Nelleke Gorton, says when she lived in Denver, Colorado, she had to adjust ingredients and cooking times to allow for the higher altitude. I check, and Parrish's kitchen in Cudal (at 491 metres) is 73 metres lower than my own - could that be why my cake sunk? Or could it be that I used skim milk, which is all I had in the fridge, instead of full cream. Or was it because my bicarb soda was out of date? Why, oh cooking gods, why?

See, this competitive cooking thing has driven me mad. Parrish does warn me it's a very different experience to home cooking and does get competitive. She's been judging for 30 years and she's seen it all.

But nevertheless, and perhaps only because she's not competing at the Canberra Show herself, she does give me a few hints.

''They look for presentation first,'' she says. ''The next main thing is taste - for me, that's very important. If it's an orange cake it must have a definite orange flavour.

''But presentation is very important, don't forget that, you wouldn't cut a piece of cake to eat if the icing was all untidy and dribbling down the side. [Ah, yes I would actually.]

''But if it looked tidy and was neatly iced, it would appeal to you, so you'd cut it and eat it.''

Parrish entered her first show

at seven, with Anzac biscuits. She won and was hooked.

It's coming to me at midnight that perhaps I've left this too late. At 45, I've bitten off more than I can chew, with a cake and two different slices.

But it's too late. I've laid my cake on the plate and it's time to get the judge's verdict.

There are about 420 entries in the cookery section, covering categories from wedding cakes to iced arrowroot biscuits. In my categories, there are about 29 chocolate cakes and 16 slices (lengthening my odds considerably - next year, I'm picking more wisely like my colleague Claire Low, who entered a coffee cake up against six others - but still failed to place, ha! - see, it does get competitive).

Scones are up first, then tea cakes, and banana cakes. I make it back to Harvest Hall at Exhibition Park in time for the judging of the slices.

I take a seat among my fellow competitors. I'm ridiculously nervous, the backs of my knees are sweaty. It's like having a parent/teacher interview, waiting for criticism of something you love. I do like my slices. They look really pretty, and they're a little different to the other ones lined up alongside. Some of the others look really plain. My passionfruit slice looks a little like Heidi Klum up against a sultana slice that looks as plain as, well, me. It's not even a contest in my mind.

Horrors, my plate is judged first, but Nelleka Gorton has nothing but good things to say.

''Lovely presentation … delicious … very nice … the raspberry is lovely, not many others used fresh fruit …''

Maybe I'm in with a chance. I start to criticise the others, silently of course, it hasn't come to that … yet. But I do suggest to photographer Katherine Griffiths that she drop her camera on the table that holds the ones yet to be judged.

Gorton has finished tasting the 32 slices. Some are disqualified straightaway. There are a couple of brownies which are obviously not slices, some are two high, others too plain. She starts to hand back plates to the stewards, the kiss of death.

And then she picks up mine. I'm shattered. I really thought I had a chance. In the end, the top four placegetters were all chocolate-based. Gorton, with all due respect, and you have to respect a woman who spent close to five hours judging by herself, must be a chocoholic.

The winner is a precision-cut (remember what Parrish said about presentation) plate of chocolate caramel slices and chocolate mint slices (boring).

I've walked away from the show with nothing. Apart from a bit of leftover slice. Nothing.

My late-night texting friend and fellow first-time competitor Kirsty Reiter fares much better, winning second place in both the carrot cake and banana cake categories. She's hooked and keen to enter more categories next year. You go girl!

Me, I don't know if I could do it again. Baking should be more joyous, more enjoyable. There's so much love in a cake.

But perhaps that's my problem. My efforts were full of stress, and perhaps that came through in the results. Next year, I'll bake with more love. I'll hit up Parrish's cookbook again, since it's full not only of cakes and slices and biscuits, but also of stories about family and friends, full of that essence of love. I'll channel my inner Merle, and maybe then I'll have a chance.

Karen Hardy is a staff feature writer.