“Well it was my fifth batch ever,” said Mr Jennings, who admitted that on the morning of Friday’s show his first batch of scones didn’t turn out so well.

“I had placed them too close together on the tray and they stuck together when they cooked, so they were a disaster,” he said.

What inspired the young man to enter the competition was the chance to replicate a colleague’s recipe.

“This lady makes them for morning tea, they are unbelievable and mine wouldn’t ever match them. But I said to her, ‘If I can get them right, I’ll enter them.’ And I had just moved to the Berry area so I thought it would be a good thing to get involved in,” he said.

His persistence paid off, with him eventually producing the six scones that won him the blue ribbon.

“When I dropped them off the lady taking them said, ‘Geez your scones are very warm, aren’t they?’ But that’s the secret, I heard that’s important,” he said.

Mr Jennings said he thought it was the height of his scones that gave him the edge but he wouldn’t disclose his recipe.

“It’s a secret recipe but I will tell you that it’s all in the kneading of the dough and the temperature of the oven,” he said.

Mr Jennings believed baking queen Vonnie Muller was going to be his biggest competition, although unfortunately she was taken ill and unable to compete this year.

“She is the local name everyone wants to beat. But there is also Lorna Knapp – she wins everything in Berry,” he said.

When he is not baking, Mr Jennings works in the finance department of Shoalhaven City Council and plays cricket and rugby league.

He has no intention of hanging up his apron strings next year

“Yeah I have got to defend my title. I encourage all competition,” he said.

Jaspers Brush resident Lorna Knapp, who was most successful exhibitor in cookery at the Berry Show, didn’t enter the scones this year.

“Well by the time I get through all the other ones, and I had 10 entries, I just don’t have time,” she said.

However, Mrs Knapp was in no way threatened by Mr Jennings’ culinary skills.

“I think it’s great. We want the younger ones to enter. I’m coming to the end of my entry years so we definitely want the younger ones coming through,” she said.