Freshmen Ashley Knight and Clare Trainor competed in the bake off.
Michaela Estruth | Collegian
Shuffling feet, hurried whispers, and clinking utensils echoed throughout the Mauck Solarium at the start of the SABake Off on Tuesday, April 4.
Sophomore and SAB Creative Specialist Joy Hanes said she came up with the idea for the new event as both a creative competition and a play on “The Great British Baking Show.”
“We have ‘Chopped’ in the fall, but we don’t do that in the spring semester,” Hanes said. “We needed a replacement idea, and I thought, ‘well, “Great British Baking show” is very springtimey and fun,’ so I thought it would fit perfectly in the spring semester.”
Teams of two signed up to compete in the baking competition with no knowledge of what they would be making.
For the first challenge, competitors had 30 minutes to make two individual-sized cheesecakes.
Every team had the same list of basic ingredients with no quantities given. The instructions lacked detail and were intentionally vague, such as: “Make Crust. Combine ingredients. Whisk Cream. Add to mixture. Decorate.”
Each team was expected to create its own flavor ideas to accent the cheesecake. They had several options including raspberry jam, M&M candies, chocolate sauce, and citrus frostings.
At the end of 30 minutes, competitors placed their cheesecakes in the fridge to set.
Sophomore Abby Richardson introduced the second challenge–cake pops. The teams had white and chocolate cake and frosting, and had to make four uniform but unique cake pops. No instructions assisted competitors for this challenge.
The variety of creative flavors increased, including orange vanilla cake, blueberry vanilla cake, chocolate peanut cake, and raspberry chocolate cake.
Sophomore Katrin Surkan made blueberry vanilla cake and was hopeful despite never making them before.
“They are very springy,” Surkan said. “I’ve seen videos of other people making them, so I’m going off of that.”
The execution, however, brought some harder challenges than the cheesecake had. The moist, golf ball-sized chocolate and vanilla spheres did not want to rest upright in presentation. After being rolled in melted chocolate, the weight of the spheres dragged them down the thin display sticks.
Freshman Clare Trainor said she had never made cheesecake or cake pops before. She said her team, the Sugar Mommas, had to make the cake batter three times to get the right consistency.
“The first time we tried rolling the cake in the chocolate, the whole ball just crumbled,” Trainor said, as she rolled the fourth and final cake pop ball.
She placed the cake-sphere on the stick and proceeded to paint chocolate over the crumbly top.
“I’m not left-handed, so we’ll see how this goes,” she said, extending her left hand and rotating her right shoulder backward to give her teammate Ashley Knight more space to finish the white chocolate drizzle.
“We are hoping the taste saves how misshapen these are,” Trainor said.
Three judges came to evaluate the final results—two were Metz Dining staff and the other was Penny Arnn. Arnn traveled throughout the room asking each team about their ideas and execution in true Great British Baking Show fashion.
The judges rated the two desserts in four areas: taste, presentation, decoration, and uniformity.
The Sugar Mammas, Trainor and Knight, won the cheesecake competition with their double layered raspberry cheesecake. The Krumb Krushers, Surkin and her teammate Katherine Miller, won the cake pop competition with their blueberry vanilla cake pops.
“Overall, I think the event went so well,” Richardson said. “People were so creative and did an amazing job using all the ingredients to make unique creations. It was such a fun spring event.”
