Chef Hall put his students into a two-man team in each of his classes for a baking competition starting on Monday, Nov. 6 and ending on Friday, Nov 17.
“I started the cake competition for student engagement and to see who had a real interest in culinary competitive events,” said Chef Hall, “and to the epicurean innovativeness grow.”
Chef Hall said the rules were that each team would have to create a traditional red velvet cake and to be able to innovate the cupcakes, flavor it, and execute it to the plate.
There were 3 rounds of the competition and the judges were Mr. McDermott and Chef Hall.
In the first round, each class had to compete against their classmates to determine who would move forward and represent their period.
The second round of the competition is where the action begins. The teams representing each period went up against each other and whoever lost got eliminated.
Rubens Michel and Karstan Sebastian, the representatives for the first period, were eliminated in the second round.
“Their cupcakes were good, but they were eliminated because they didn’t innovate the cupcake as the other contestants did, which canceled them out immediately”, said Chef Hall.
Coming down to the last round, second period Junior contestants, Brendy Joseph and Mia Rodriguez, went up against Katlin Saddler and Russell Bryant, the Freshmen of third period. In the end, the second period team came out victorious winning the whole competition.
“The challenge was very difficult, I didn’t expect to make to go up against the seniors at the end,” said Katlin Saddler, a Freshmen, she continue, “I didn’t mind losing against them, it was expected, they’ve been learning for 3 years more than us.”
Mia, the other contestant said the opposite, “The competition overall was pretty easy, we took a simple dessert and added different twists and flavors to make it our own.”
Winning the competition and earning the prize gave Mia and Brendy, “A rewarding feeling because it showed that our hard work paid off from that amount of practice we put into the end.” Said Mia Rodriguez.
Brendy also went and said “ I enjoyed the competition because I got to experiment with different baking techniques for the cupcakes.”
Even though the Freshmans lost against the second-period team, Katlin said, “I felt amazing about being in second place, to be honest I never expected to go so far.”
“It is really exciting to see the skill level of the Freshmen students. They are hungry to be successful.” Chef Hall said being proud of the Freshmen.
