Many highschoolers experiment with baking brownies or cakes, but two students on Chef Grier’s SkillsUSA team are taking their baking skills to the next level. Juniors Ella Carroll and Mehak Sidhu placed third last year at the state competition in Wedding Cake Decorating, and they’re aiming to place even higher this year.
“State is going to be in April and we’re going to try to do something similar to what we did last year since we had so much success,” Carroll said. “Last spring we did raspberry flavored icing with vanilla cake. My partner and I get to pick the design and flavors, so it’s just whatever we want to do.“
With state less than two months away, Carroll and Sidhu have been planning the design of their cake. It’s a difficult process because of the constraints of the competition, but Carroll enjoys the creative aspect of the planning.
“First, we make a design of how we want a wedding cake to look like and we make two dummy cakes on the base. Then we make a singular, smaller cake on top that we decorate to make it look like a wedding cake,” Carroll said. ”We don’t do many toppers; instead, we pipe lots of different roses and other designs. The piping is really challenging, but it’s so rewarding when it looks good.”
To prepare for the competition, Carroll and Sidhu practice a variety of baking skills, both with Grier and on their own.
“We practice every Saturday from 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. for the months leading up to the competition,” Carroll said. “We also work on teamwork and practicing other stuff at home to make sure that we are ready to go. I’ll get a cutting board out and use different tips to try to figure out different piping designs.”
Despite her success, Carroll’s first time competing in Wedding Cake Decorating was just last year after hearing about it on announcements.
“I’ve been baking since middle school, but I got into cake baking and decorating last year. Since I enjoy it so much, when the SkillsUSA team was on announcements, I showed up to the call out meeting to try out,” Carroll said. “Chef talked to me and one of my friends that I tried out with and asked if we wanted to do wedding cake decorating. I was excited to do it because I really like trying new skills and experiencing a new area.”
SkillsUSA also has competitions in baking and culinary, but Carroll enjoys the decorating aspect of the wedding cake competition. Before state, Carroll and Sidhu have to be careful to ensure that everything is ready to bring for the competition.
”To prepare beforehand, it’s a struggle to make sure that everything is cooked correctly and will transfer well when we get to the competition since we show up on site with our icing and cakes already made,” Carroll said. “You can divide out the work however you want to between you and your partner, and then you go against other teams of two. Then the judges decide based on the taste of the cake and its overall appearance.”
Another challenge comes in the form of the competition location. Instead of being held in a large kitchen, the competition is done in a warehouse.
“The biggest challenge on site is how different the competition space is from a normal kitchen. It’s a warehouse type of area, so you can’t do good sanitation or bring a lot of materials because there’s no electricity,” Carroll said. “It’s really hard to keep things clean and up to sanitation protocols without all of the things that you need, which is tricky because we also get graded on following sanitation standards.”
This year, Carroll and Sidhu are challenging themselves to overcome these obstacles and place even higher at the state competition in April.
