On May 1 Family Consumer Science Teacher Keri Shultz-Brace hosted the spring semester Cake Competition Bake-Off for the baking classes. Students were to pick a book and design a cake that represented all the elements of the story. “It’s a fun way to teach the essential skill of cake-making,” said Schultz-Brace. Each group had a week to bake and decorate their cakes before presenting it to the judges. The panel of judges consisted of a mix of staff and administrators, who based their winning picks on how well the cake was decorated and the concept of cake in relation to the book picked. The votes were tallied and the winners were announced the following day.
For the first period baking class, seniors An Quach, Darren Vargas-Holmes, Jade Pierson, and Emma Owen were awarded best in the class for their Alice in Wonderland cake. The cake itself was a red velvet, chocolate, vanilla, and funfetti checkerboard design, with half decorated to represent the characters of The Queen of Hearts and the other side, Alice, from the story. “We experienced a lot of obstacles on the way. There was a time where we put the cake in the fridge instead of the freezer and had to redo all the decorations from scratch, and it was really trusting the process,” said Vargas-Holmes. When their win was announced, Vargas-Holmes said, “I didn’t think we’d win at first, but I was mostly surprised and thought it was cool.”
The second competition of the day was held during the third period baking class, where senior Issy Pancho took first place for her The Lorax cake. The cake was made with homemade funfetti batter and buttercream frosting, with rainbow sprinkles on the inside to spill out when cut into. It was decorated with shaped rice krispies wrapped in fondant as the character of The Lorax, the story element of the tree stump, and the truffula trees with cotton candy. “I didn’t end up following my initial design, and I started to panic when trying to just go with what I had, but I was really happy with how my cake turned out,” said Pancho. “I was excited when I won because I wasn’t even at school that day, so it was nice to see that people enjoyed my work,” she said.
The final contest occurred during sixth period, resulting in a tie. Sophomores Xander Shaw, Shea Castellano and freshman Ava Garcia tied their The Lorax cake with senior Rebecca Pyun, sophomores Ina McCloud and Halle Wilkening’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie cake. The If You Give a Mouse a Cookie cake was a chocolate chip cake with whipped cream frosting, decorated in chocolate chip cookies and a fondant mouse character from the book.
