With one week before Thanksgiving Day, the holiday season has officially begun, and on Wednesday morning, BankTrust of Selma held their annual Thanksgiving Dessert Contest.

“This is the national championship of desserts in Selma, Alabama,” BankTrust’s Roberta Leach told the judges.

From 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. BankTrust’s Keith Dismukes and Mac Martin along with the Times-Journal’s Bill Tomey judged 11 homemade desserts on both presentation and taste.

To be a judge, “It takes a love of dessert, a love of your bank and a love of Thanksgiving,” Leach said.

“It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it,” Martin said.

The judges scored BankTrust employees’ sweet treats from 1 to 5, on a scale of pretty good to a median score of approaching awesome and a max of best ever — wow, as part of their annual Thanksgiving celebrations. The cooks were competing not only for the title of making BankTrust’s best dessert, but also for a Walmart gift card as well as the chance to wear a tiara and hold the bejeweled scepter.

After scoring the pies, cakes and trifles on their appearances and tasting each one, Leach asked if any of the judges needed a second taste before tallying the final score.

“I think I probably need to scarf down the whole key lime pie just to make sure,” Dismukes said. “As soon as I saw it, I just wanted to dive in.”

After Leach tallied the scores she announced the first place winner was Monica Stoudenmire with an Oreo trifle. Second place came as a sweet surprise for Jan Williamson, who made caramel apple cheesecake bars. Willaimson said she wasn’t planning on entering the contest Wednesday morning, but had made her dessert for the BankTrust Thanksgiving lunch later that the day.

“No way! I wasn’t [even] going to bring it in,” Williamson said  in surprise when she was announced as the second place winner. “I was going to leave it in the truck.”

Heather Adams came in third place with her candy-covered, chocolate dipped pretzel sticks.

The dessert contest is, “just to have fun,” Leach said. “It’s been going on for 10 years. Anybody can enter, as many as they want, it just has to be homemade.”