The very Aussie tweak behind Caroline’s porridge world championship win

London: Caroline Velik spent more than a decade trying to devise the perfect breakfast – and now she has a world title to prove she made it.

Velik, a Melbourne food stylist, has just won the top prize for a specialty dish at the World Porridge Making Championship in Scotland after taking on contestants from 14 countries.

The victory came after she added her mother’s rum banana recipe to a new dish she devised with oatmeal to create what she calls the porridge jaffle.

Velik emerged from the championship, held each year in Carrbridge in the Scottish Highlands, with two honours because her jaffle won the top prize in the specialty category and her traditional porridge won silver.

“I was actually really pleased with that,” she said modestly.

The gold went to technology consultant Sven Seljom from Norway, who made his porridge from Norwegian black oats using sea salt and water he brought from home.

The contestants had 30 minutes to make both dishes – traditional and specialty – on two gas burners for a judging panel of top chefs hosted by Scottish MasterChef finalist Sarah Rankin. There were 30 contestants, including previous champions. Steel-cut oats were a requirement.

Velik began her search for the ideal porridge in 2014 when she thought her husband would appreciate a breakfast made with better oats.

“I was more of an instant porridge girl,” she said. “But I found this beautiful German oat roller, and once we had that, we had to go in search of the groats, which are the whole oats.

“And then, once we started cooking with them, it just tasted so much better. There’s a freshness to it, and a nuttiness. And that was it.”

Velik, a past contributor to the Good Food section of this masthead with recipes ranging from laksa to hummingbird cake, declared four years ago that she wanted to celebrate porridge.

She entered an online version of the championship when the pandemic forced the suspension of the in-person contest, and then competed in Scotland in 2022. This helped her devise a winning specialty dish.

“They want you to really push the boundaries, but still be true to the porridge,” she said.

“I felt like I wanted to bring parts of Australia and our history to what I was cooking.”

When she read that the jaffle had been invented in Australia, she was driven to create porridge jaffles.

A yoghurt flatbread was filled with her mother’s recipe for rum bananas, with Bundaberg banana toffee rum liqueur, bananas, oatmeal and wattle seed extract, and Davidson plum sugar sprinkled on top.

The porridge chieftain at this year’s event, Alan Rankin, praised the winners. “The standard this year was exceptional, and it’s wonderful to see the event continuing to go from strength to strength,” he said in a statement.

What makes a good porridge? Velik said she soaked rolled oats overnight to ensure they were “fluffy” and hydrated, using three times the amount of water to oats. She suggested a teaspoon of salt.

The key was to gently simmer the porridge while stirring. “Not too much of a hectic boil,” she said.

“You just want it to simmer along.”

Airport security staff almost ruined her plans when they sought to confiscate her favourite rolling pin when she passed through the X-ray at Melbourne Airport. They allowed her to go back and put it in checked luggage, in a bag with her other equipment.

“They said: ‘That’s a weapon.’ I thought: ‘You haven’t seen my jaffle iron.’”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.