last year i stumbled upon the 1st international biscuit festival in knoxville when i was visiting some friends. in a matter of minutes several thousand tickets sold out for the pride of the south, the biscuit.  this year living here i decided i was not going to miss out on the event of the year and my friends jessica, emily, julie and her daughter shyla drove 12 hours to the smokies to join me.

biscuit festival involves the following:  biscuit boulevard, where for a $5 ticket you get to sample 5 different types of biscuits, several different forms of a biscuit breakfasts kick off the day, there are cooking demonstrations with biscuits, biscuit cook-off competitions and last but not least the ms./mister biscuit pageant where men and women compete against each other to reign over the biscuit festival.  music, a farmers market and plenty of other downtown festivities are also all happening.

in celebration of the biscuit jessica made us all matching tee shirts to wear.  on them has a picture of biscuits and the title “small soft leavened bread fest 2011”  shyla, aka “the bean” had a matching onesie that declared her “biscuit bean.”  we suddenly realized wearing shirts with biscuits on them meant people asked you lots of questions about the festival.

once we got our golden tickets the sampling began.  although i will say everyone who had been at biscuit festival last year seemed to have the same game plan this year.  last year = no tickets after 10:15am, this year = everyone showing up for biscuit fest at the same time to sample even though there was plenty of tickets to go around.

jessica and emily milked their “i drove here 12 hours for biscuit festival” and ended up getting extra tickets for more sampling from some of the booths. what i learned and am offering it up for next year is this….. the sampling goes on till 4pm hold out.  i wandered back to biscuit boulevard around 2pm to see what was left for my finally 4 biscuits.  at this point of the day the place was empty some booths had packed up and left and others were handing me biscuits 2 at a time.

my favorite biscuit actually came from the knoxville convention center. it was a cinnamon biscuit that was sliced in half and layered with homemade apple butter and whip cream.  the best part of all is they gave me 2 of them!

i ate my batch of biscuits while watching the first round of the biscuit cook-off.  the round i got to see was the kids cook-off.  2 girls and one boy, the boy was very serious about baking, he even was wearing a chef’s jacket.

to end the whole day i got to see the apron ceremony for the ms./mister biscuit pageant.  this pageant isn’t your normal beauty contest.  men and women compete against each other in 3 categories:  1. aprons–they must wear one of their own aprons and tell the significance of it 2.  biscuit talent–the talent must involve or be themed on biscuits 3.  the biscuit walk–biscuits are stacked on top of the contestants heads they must balance them as they walk across the stage.

there is only 4 words to describe biscuit fest……it was a blast.  i already can’t wait till next year and maybe just maybe i’ve already started planning a talent that involves biscuits for the pageant.