New Plymouth bakery Piccolo Morso wins first place in national competition

Piccolo Morso won first place in the New Zealand best custard square competition.

A last-minute dash to enter New Zealand’s best custard square competition has paid off for New Plymouth bakery Piccolo Morso.

The Fitzroy bakery has shared first place in Baking New Zealand’s Great Square Off Custard Square Championship, alongside Waikato’s Volare Bread.

Piccolo Morso owner Julia Kaur-Randhawa said they only got around to baking their entries at 2am on the day of the competition.

“We were meant to do it earlier that day but it just got later and later. I’d been there for 14 hours at that point,” she said.

Kaur-Randhawa had been thinking about taking a slightly different approach to their usual custard square but decided to stick with the tried and true recipe.

“We could have gone with something a bit more unique but we just thought, ‘let’s leave it’. We wanted to serve something that customers can come and buy from the cafe after the competition and experience it for themselves.”

Piccolo Morso owner Julia Kaur-Randhawa.

Chief judge Ron Omelvena said the Piccolo Morso custard square was extremely well executed, with a delicious passionfruit-flavoured icing.

“Both the first-place getters were extremely well executed from a technical perspective. The flavour profiles were excellent and they both had finishing touches that elevated them above the rest,” he said.

“It’s the first time we’ve encountered a joint winner across our competitions, but the standard was so high and we just couldn’t split them.”

Second place went to Auckland’s Wen & Yen Bakery, with U-Bake in Timaru in third.

Piccolo Morso also placed third in the Decked Out Doughnut Championship, which was won by U-Bake, with Wen & Yen second.