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Dad and Lad Cake Bake


jamist649

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This is something that NO ONE in our Scouting community has ever done before. I think it would be a great way to sort of "nudge" the Dads in our Pack to get more involved. Thinking about hitting the committee with it as maybe a March or April Pack event.

 

Anyone that has participated or seen one, how did it go? Any tips or tricks? How about prizes, judging, etc.

 

Thanks!

 

 

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Come up with a boat load of superlatives. Biggest, tallest, most patriotic, most disgusting (the boys love that), yummiest, best use of the colors blue and gold, best Cub Scout theme, on and on and on.

 

One year for prizes a dad came back from some corporate shindig with a case of paper chef's hats the caterer had thrown out. We decorated the chef hat for trophies. That was pretty cool.

 

Decide what you are going to do with the cakes in advance. The first year we ran this everyone drew numbers to see which cake you took home. We spent $30 on baking stuff and came home with a cake that wasn't fit to eat. After that, the pack decided that everyone got their own cake back. I know some packs had auctions. If Billy really wants his own cake back, dad needs to step up with the bidding. That was suggested here, but our pack sold a ton of popcorn so we didn't need the money. The committee decided we didn't need to fleece the flock again.

 

Figure out how much you want to push the "Lad/Dad" angle. Be considerate of Scouts who may not live with their dad. Our pack called our event the "Fellers' Bake-off." Any feller would do -- grandfather, uncle, neighbor, mom's new squeeze, whoever. And if it were a problem we put it out there that mom or grandma was okay too. There was a recent thread here about that side of things, if you want to search it.

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Our old pack used to say the bakers had to be someone who normally does NOT cook help with the cake. They must clean up the kitchen and have fun. Hubby and son once did the ruins from the Lion King. Talk about a big cake.

 

Get some certificate paper and make up awards, leave the name spot blank and recruit a couple of parents to fill them out. Make sure you get the names on a piece of something that stays with the cake. Make sure each scout gets some kind of award.

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Back in our cub days my son and I made a volcano out of a heap of cupcakes covered with significant amounts of chocolate frosting. We made a hollow at the top and filled it with red and orange frosting which spilled out and ran down the mountain on to a bunch of gum drops (the village).

 

There was nothing else like it at the Pack meeting! Most of the cakes looked like mom had helped out quite a bit. It's usually obvious which one's only the dad and son did. I think we won, "Most Mountainous" or something like that. Our Pack gave Cubs the option of taking their cake home, or auctioning it off as a fund raiser. The last thing I wanted was to bring that monstrosity home - in fact my wife said she didn't want to see it again, so we auctioned it. It brought the highest price - $7!! The parents weren't too happy, but the winning kid was delighted!

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We held our first ever "Parent-Son Cookoff" last year.

 

In spirit, it's a father son thing, but we have a few scouts who's dads decides to opt out of fatherhood or who decided "family" just wasn't their thing. So it's open to the scout and a family friend, Uncle, neighbor, etc..but mom will have to do if nobody else is available. Remember, we can't punish the scouts for something beyond their control!

 

Now, we hada few catagories: Most original, most creative, best tasting , and overal grand champion.

 

Last year ( my first year in scouting) I decided that my son would do the majority of the work. So what is a good dessert for a 7 year old to make?

CHEESECAKE! You have to make the crust, you have to make the cheesecake. You have to mix, blend, pour and kinda shape it out.

WE bought gel frosting and hand drew a Fleur-De-Lis into the cake. We spelled out his pack number as well as den number too.

 

My role was 95% observer while he was 95% baker/ chief cook.

Granted, a cheesecake is not a culinary masterpiece...but he's was only 7 at the time.

 

He ended up winning the best tasting catagory and Overall Grand Champion.

We held this contest at our anuual Christmas party and invited 3 non scout associated people who happened to be members of the CO to judge the dishes,

My son won the grand prize as it was obvious by the work that he was the main baker and not just an observer as was obvious in many of the desserts.

 

One high light of this for me was watching him lick the Phillidelphia Cream Cheese package (after putting contents in bowl) thinking it would tast like the finished product!

His face turned inside out and sideways, yet he tried to keep his cool by saying "That's great stuff!" LOL!

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Oh yeah...last year, the desserts were eaten up as just that dessert. The judging was held while we ate "real" food. Afterward, the contest desserts were stuck on the same table as the zChristmas dinner desserts.

This year, we decided to either take the ddesserts to a childrens shelter, an old folks home, or raffle them off and give the procedes to a shelter of some sort. Maybe a soup kitchen.

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Great suggestions! Keep 'em coming! I like the "Scout/Parent Bakeoff" name. It sounds less gender specific just in case we have a Scout that can't find a male partner. I really like this idea! I heard about it at this month's Roundtable for the first time and I just presented it (in newsletter form) to the Den Leaders/Committee Members just today. I hope they don't hate it!

 

I'll keep you informed. I thinking of holding it in January, kind of a lead up to the PWD.

 

Thanks

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We did ours as dessert at the Blue & Gold. The kids had a blast with it, and it saved the pack a lot of money in terms of having to provide dessert for 100+ people. Definitely do find a name that doesn't automatically exclude (or appear to exclude) kids whose dads are not in the picture for whatever reason.

 

 

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Like Iron Chef America, there is another show on the Food Network called Challenge. It's pitting cake bakers against each other based on a theme.

 

Pick a theme and then let the dads and boys have at it. Then select the different categories to judge on pick some kind of good "trophies" and then like the show, hand out a $10,000 check to the winner. :)

 

Stosh

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the pack my son was with had one each year... it was also done as a cake auction to raise money for the pack. There were different catagories each year - I saw someone already mentioned a bunch. We got a local auctioner that would donate his time for the evening and we brought in a few adults that were judges and would pick top 3 for each catagory Judges were often Mayor, Police Chief, BSA SM, COR, CC...

 

the biggest rule that we put in was that everything on/in the cake had to be edible... and we gave each boy/adult pair a card where they wrote on it "type of cake" "type of frosting" and "other ingredients" the auctioner would list those off and buyers would get that at time of check out to verify no allergy issues.

 

I always bought several of the cheaper cakes that would go for $10-$15 and take what my family wasn't going to eat to the police station, fire station, care center, and the like. We also made sure local businesses knew they would often send a person to buy a cake for their employees.

 

oh, and our rules said "Favorite Related Older Guy" or "Male Role Model" due to not all the boys having dad living near by and we had at least 1 boy who's father had passed away.

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We started this about 9 years ago when I was a cubmaster. We used to call it "Lad and Dad Bake Off," but after the inaugural year, we changed it to the "Great Cake Bake Off" due to several families that do have single mother or the cub is being raised by grandparents. I was the Pack's 1st auctioneer, but I was quickly replaced by a professional auctioneer who donated his time to make it fun! He is still doing it for us. He is in his late 80's!

 

We use this as one of our fundraisers. Each entry costs $10 processing fee. In turn, the scout gets $100 Pack money to bid on a cake of his choice or save it for the live auction. The scouts' cakes are put up for the silent auction. The scout can buy his cake back by spending all of his Pack bucks plus $1. The cakes are being judged by a panel of experts (local culenary school students). We give out 1-3 trophies by rank. Judging is done with a set of rubric criteria, including more points for obvious scout's own hand, creativity, edibility, etc. Adult leaders donate a cake from each den for the live auction. One the auctioneer starts to roll, the kids went wild! The boys would pool their moneys together. The price would go up to $400-$600 Pack bucks! It is great!

 

One Den would be responsible for chairing the event, including making the Pack's bucks, arranging judges, accounting, etc.

 

1Hour

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This is the first year in about 5 years we are not doing it just like the others posts have suggested. The idea was to get fathers involved or some other male role model. The first year one den used cake blanks (this allowed the boys to do it in a den meeting setting, it was only a decorating contest), but the rule was amended the following year - it had to be edible.

 

We had several categories - most scout like, best of theme, most patriotic... very similar to several of the pinewood derby categories we have. The boys were able to do some judging and the parents were allowed to do some judging.

 

We did this in lieu of or as our Blue and Gold banquet. We had some issues getting everything organized a couple of years prior and this seemed to eliminate the problems completely. The only reason we are switching back is due to 100 year anniversary and the parents want a change.

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