1st Cake Bake tonight!

[jamist649]

After thinking about it for a while, I went ahead and planned it. I was a little wary of a Cake Bake, I was afraid alot of our Scouts and Dads would think it was "frilly" or something. I was quite suprised when I heard from our Den Leaders that our Scouts and Parents were feverously working on thier cakes and excited to see what everybody else comes up with!

 

I was thinking of letting each Den judge the other Den (i.e. Tigers judge Wolves, Bears judge Webelos,etc.) with an "impartial" judge to judge Best in Show. Any tips from those of you all who have done it before?

 

Thanks

 

 

[ManyHats]

We usually have 5 or 6 categories (ex. Scout design, Patriotic, Winter Theme, Most Unusual/Creative, Valentines) and a Pack Favorite. We have a couple impartial judges that judge all the categories but Pack Favorite. They tend to pick the ones that it is obvious the scout did a lot of the work. Then all the scouts do a secret ballot vote on their favorite. This works best if everyone doesn't know who made each cake, so they don't vote based on popularity.

[Scoutfish]

Frilly? I think not! LOL! In other words..it's on now! You are fixing to see a "who can one up the other" contest!

Creativity like you have never seen before.

 

You will be amazed at what comes through those doors.

 

And some might even be edible too! LOL!

 

As for judging, we asked 3 people from our charter organazation to judge. They were 3 people who did not actually know or have relationships to any of the scouts. That way there was no favortism due to the scouts, the scouts parents, any relationship bias or what not.

 

One more thing...the scouts put their name under the plates, pans, dishes or whatever. tape works okay. That way, you don't know by just looking ..who made what dessetrt, no partiality that way either!(This message has been edited by scoutfish)

[rollie67]

Good luck with it....while I didn't pick up any clues that you are doing this, we hold a cake auction and give the proceeds to a charity, such as backpacks of supplies for wounded soldiers. We also ask for donations from local businesses and also hold raffles and silent auctions. It's a blast seeing grandpa outbid his daughter-in-law for little Johhny's cake. Even had a wife/husband going at it up to $100, but he was a Marine and knew what a good cause it was for, so they just had fun with it.

 

We brought back the previous Webelos 2 den leader that did the voting and had no kids in the comepetion, and yes, the names were hidden. The only rule we had for the Pack favorite was that they could not vote for their own...didn't want a 35 way tie.

[Twocubdad]

One year we let all the boys vote for the winners. The Tiger Division wound up in a nine-way tie. Yep, every single one of them voted for their own cake! Ya gotta love them Tigers!

 

We were a large pack and could have 50-60 cakes at the event. We had theme-based awards (as Manyhats suggests) and awards by rank. Usually trophies for those. For everyone else we had a big stack of ribbons and a parent with a Sharpie. The judging committee came up with some superlative for everyone. Best Use of Green Icing, Most Disgusting (actually a very sought-after award), Best Use of Gummy Worms, Flattest, on and on and on and on....

 

One year a dad rescued a case of paper chef hats from the trash at some corporate dinner. Some markers and glitter paint and we had the best awards we ever had.

[kbandit]

So give us an update on how it went.

[jamist649]

It went great! I was amazed at some of the cakes that came in the door. We had a HUGE American flag cake, a "dirt" cake with camping scene, and a LIFE SIZE guitar cake...just to name a few. It was Pinewood Derby all over again. You could tell Dad was DEEPLY involved in some of the cakes. I was really happy that the idea was embraced and "ran with" as much as it was.

 

We had each Den "judge" another Den (i.e. Tigers judged Wolves, Wolves judged Tigers, etc) we also did a secret ballot for a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place "best in show". We awarded simple kitchen utensils as prizes (The golden spatula, the silver spoon, and the bronze ladle LOL). The guys LOVED IT!

 

Check out cubscoutpack29.blogspot.com for a few pics of some of the cakes. Not all are pictured, but I got a few shots between everything else.

[Scoutfish]

Now just wait til next year! Everybody sw what everybody else did this year..and now it's time to step it up next year..

Last year was our first ever "Parent/Son Cookoff".

Well I wanted my son to do at least half of the work, but as much more as he wanted.

So I chose a cheesecake. Figured he could do that no problem.

 

Well, my son did 90% of the work, and when you figure it's hard to screw up the flavor.

 

We used icing to make a 3-D Fluer De Lis, and surrounded it with our pack and den #.

He won in his catagory and grand champion.

 

So this year.........yep! a lot of cheesecakes! LOL!

My son didn't placem but actually learned something: He still had as much fun even though he didn't win!

 

But next year..........LOL!

[briantshore]

We did this last year for our Blue and Gold. We had our Unit Commissioner, and our FOS presenter be our judges. I also bought a stanless steel desert serving spatula, and engraved it with the boys name, date, just like a trophy. It looked reallly good.