By Michael Hastings

Contestants rose to the challenge of baking their favorite dessert for a contest at the Dixie Classic Fair in Winston-Salem, N.C., earlier this month. The 74 entries included cakes, pies, pudding, tarts, crepes, mousse and more.

Just like last year, the Favorite Dessert Contest consisted of lots of chocolate, but fruit and other desserts were also represented.

"There's a lot more diversity this year," said Baxter Cromer, one of the judges and a chef at Village Tavern in Winston-Salem, which sponsored the contest. "There's a lot of classy stuff here. A lot of imagination went into some of these."

Some of the creations included a caramel praline pie, a ricotta cheesecake with a blood-orange glaze and a cake of crepes layered with buttercream filling and topped with a chocolate coating.

Contestants also baked up such classics as banana pudding, coconut cake and pecan pie.

Despite the variety of entries, judges chose three cheesecakes as the winners. But these were three very different cheesecakes.

Lisa Robertson of King, N.C., who won first place last year with a peanut-butter and chocolate cake, made the most unusual cheesecake of all and won first place again. Her Pecan-Pie Cheesecake takes a fully baked pecan pie and bakes it again between layers of cheesecake batter. She said she was inspired by a similar cheesecake she had years ago in a Cheesecake Factory restaurant. "I've been thinking about it off and on since then, but I never could figure out how they did it."

She found the solution after reading about a similar cheesecake that won the 2002 Southern Living Cook-Off. Robertson then came up with her own version.

Kay Owen of Pfafftown, N.C., won second place with One Bite Will Do U Cheesecake, which combines chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter and caramel. The cheesecake is plain except for a swirl of chocolate. Most of the flavors come from four layers of fudge added to the cheesecake after it has been baked.

"That's just the fudge I've been making for years," Owen said. "My husband said that would make it too rich, but I told him that's what has been winning all week."

Owen also came up with an unusual decoration for the cake by staggering upright wafer-roll cookies to create a castle effect.

Bonnie Crouse made perhaps the simplest cake of the three. Her Cocoa-Mocha Cheesecake relies on a tall, majestic look and a light and smooth texture.

Crouse said she first made a version of this cheesecake from a recipe in the December 1970 issue of Gourmet.

She said that the key to the texture is gentle handling to prevent it from falling.

See the first cheesecake >>