On 10 December 2015, the Design and Technology department were very proud to hold the first Bicester School Bake-Off competition.
Over twenty students arrived after school, clutching their bags full of ingredients and eager to get started. Mr Payne introduced the rules and the assessment criteria. Students were to be judged on the levels of difficulty attempted, appearance of the final product and of course the all-important, taste and texture.
Every house was represented in the competition by a selection of students from years 7, 8 and 9 with a particularly strong contingent from the Year 7 tutor group MWD. Some very ambitious projects were attempted, some were successful, some not so, but all were so different and so imaginative that judges could immediately see the difficulty of their task of judging such high standards.
One hour gone and really professional looking products were emerging from ovens. The work didn’t stop there, as students were now mixing various types of icing and applying complicated enrobing techniques. Popular Christmas colours and themes were adopted and displayed and the demonstration table was soon filled with a range of highly successful products.
Judges were presented with the final entries and the task of deciding a winner. Each judge chose four finalists for each of the categories and points were awarded appropriately. The most enviable task for the judges was to taste test. Every cake or biscuit product was sampled and again sorted to four finalists.
Scores were then added and a short deliberation conference was held before the final result was announced. In third place was James Barker representing Pankhurst with a fantastic chocolate brownie. Second place was awarded to Elizabeth Cairns from Attenborough with wonderful orange muffins. First place was awarded to Molly Price, representing Moore, whose cup-cake cacophony – in the shape of a Christmas tree – simply wowed everyone. An additional prize of ‘best Year 7’ was awarded to Emilia Sims from MWD for her lovely textured and presented cupcakes.