First quarter Western Wayne eighth grade family & consumer science students, after studying different cultures in their social studies class, voted to represent Mayan culture in a Cake-Off Competition held in late October. The Cake-Off Competition was made up of nine teams, competing against each other to be the ultimate Cake-Off winner. Mrs. Dawn Krautter is the Western Wayne Middle School family & consumer sciences teacher.
Krautter explained that each team created a cake that represented Mayan culture, civilization, or contributions. In addition, the teams wrote a descriptive paragraph explaining their representation. Cakes were judged on eye appeal, creativity, accuracy of facts, descriptive paragraph writing, and overall presentation.
The third place cake winner with a total of 216 points was made by Justin Eldred, Leah Fedorchak, Cayden Rose, Isis Christian, and Karina Booths. The second place cake winner with a total of 217 points was made by Taylor Maiocco, Laila Filkovsky, Eddie Belavitz, William Parry, Darrell Schramm and Adrianna Scarpati. Finally, the first place champions with a total of 229 points for their cake included Stephanie Soom, Michaela Birnkrant, Emily Dickson, Tyler Gottshall, and Cianna Tyler.
The third place cake winners explained that astrology played a key role in the design of their cake that has purple and blue icing and looks like the night sky in a galaxy.
“The Mayans enjoyed studying astrology, so we decided to make that part of our cake design,” eighth grader Karina Booths explained.
Fellow group member Isis Christian discussed the challenges the group faced that later paid off in their third place win.
“Leveling the cake was challenging,” Isis explained. “We also had to learn how to be cooperative with each other and be able to work with the supplies we had to make the cake.”
The second place cake winners agree that they learned a lot about working together from their experience in the Cake-Off Competition.
“In order to get everything done in time, we had to learn how to do separate jobs within the group at the same time,” eighth grader Taylor Maiocco explained.
This second place group worked together to create a cake that looked like a temple where Mayans would worship the Gods and bring food and other sacrifices to it to please them.
The winning Cake-Off Competition group included a variety of different aspects of the Mayan culture into their cake design. They had a small temple on it made of Rice Krispie treats, a river on it with Goldfish crackers in it to represent how the Mayans got some of their foods, and the sides of the cake were a grayish blue color to represent the Mayan’s love of astrology.
“We wanted to incorporate as much as we could about the Mayan lifestyle in our cake design,” eighth grader Michaela Birnkrant explained.
All of the eighth grade students involved in the Western Wayne Middle School Cake-Off Competition were excited to take on this challenge and display their work for the school community. Western Wayne Middle School administration, faculty, and staff are proud of the accomplishments of these students.
