With black icing covering her shirt, Malaysia Hunt, senior, frosted her roulette themed cupcakes for the biannual Baking and Pastry Arts competition, Cupcake Wars.
The stressful atmosphere and quick pace caused a struggle, but the competition was overall a good experience, Hunt said.
“We had a fire drill at the beginning of class so we had to rush,” Hunt said. “It was fun at the end.”
Every semester, students put their skills to the test by competing in the contest, which was inspired by the TV show Cupcake Wars. The FACS department has more than 180 students participate yearly to showcase their baking and decorating skills.
“The process was easy, but getting everything like the box and stuff was kind of tough,” Hunt said.
Since the beginning of the year, Lauren Bell, Baking and Pastry Arts teacher, has been looking forward to hosting this contest for the first time as a new teacher at MHS.
“Whenever I first took over this position, all the kids were like, ‘When are cupcake wars? When do we get to do cupcake wars?’ so the kids talk about it, they really like doing it,” Bell said.
Bell said students are assigned to teams by a random generator and the themes are decided by each team.
Cupcake Wars also includes a presentation portion where students decorate a pizza box to showcase their cupcakes to judges that include staff, coaches, teachers and principals, Bell said, and the criteria they use are taste, texture, display, and decorating skills.
Teo Airasca, senior, said the display and decorating skills were most important to the competition.
“The whole decoration behind it was what really stood out, so I think it was just a combo of both,” Airasca said.
Baking is what he found most difficult.
“For my group it was definitely the actual making of the cupcakes, we could not handle ourselves in the kitchen.” Airasca said.
Despite this, Airasca said the experience was exciting and entertaining.
“It was super fun and everyone wanted to do creative stuff and enjoy it,” Airasca said.
Isabella Ansell, junior, won first place in the competition last year with the theme Wicked, but she was disappointed with the lack of prizes.
“It was just bragging rights, which kind of sucks because we put our heart and soul into those cupcakes,” Ansel said.
Ansel said she found the experience stressful given the time crunch, but she still found the hands-on competition fun. She was able to borrow supplies including chocolate molds and other professional baking equipment from a baking business in order to make their cupcakes.
“I would recommend it, I mean you kind of have to do it so if you like stuff like that, take the class but be prepared,” Ansel said.
