Eleanor Nery ’24: LA junior Eleanor Nery working (left) and her cake decorating partner Olivia Oxton (right) of Morse High School putting the finishg touches on their wedding cake, which won a gold medal in Cake Decorating at the Maine SkillsUSA competition on March 17-18, 2023.
Two Lincoln Academy students who attend Bath Regional Career and Technical Center (BRCTC) participated in the 2023 Skills USA competition in Bangor on March 17-18. Abigail Reed competed in Extemporaneous Speaking, and junior Eleanor Nery competed in Wedding Cake decorating.
Reed, who is in the BRCTC Cosmetology program and tried extemporaneous speaking for the first time, did not place in this year’s competition. Nery, along with cake decorating partner Olivia Oxton of Morse High School, won a gold medal.
Nery is part of the culinary program at BRCTC. In this program students learn a variety of cooking techniques, ranging from knife skills to sauce and pastry skills. Once a week culinary students run a cafe where other BRCTC students can purchase baked goods, smoothies, and other snacks prepared by culinary students. Nery hopes to attend culinary school after high school and eventually pursue a career as a chef.
“I love cooking and learning new things,” said Nery, “We went on a tour during sophomore year and the kitchen at Bath Tech is huge! It was amazing to see what they have available. The chefs are really knowledgeable, and I thought it was a good opportunity to pursue my career goal of being a chef.”
SkillsUSA is a national organization that provides students with opportunities to develop leadership, teamwork, and technical skills through hands-on competitions and training programs. Students from BRCTC who are recommended by their instructors compete each year at the Maine event. State level competitions feed into national competitions in some fields, but wedding cake decorating does not have a national competition.
“Competing in Skills helps students understand the work environment and pressures of working in a kitchen,” said Angelique Tamburo, one of BRCTC’s culinary instructors. “Time management is one of the most important skills that they learn in culinary, and applying that in a real-life situation really helps them understand how important that skill is…. Competing at Skills also lets competitors meet potential employers and gets them excited about their future careers.”
To prepare for the competition, Nery and Oxton made their cake and icing ahead of time, and brought them to Bangor. They had the use of a table and a small refrigerator at the venue, and were set up by 6:40 am. When the competition started at 7 am, the team had four hours to slice, tier, frost, and decorate their cake, a process that necessitated moving layers in and out of the refrigerator to chill between applications of frosting.
Seven teams competed in cake decorating this year. Judging included not only the technical and aesthetic aspects of building and decorating the cake, but the chef’s outfits and planning as well. “We had to make sure everything was up to standard, including the hat, hairnet, neckerchief, and white shirt underneath the chef’s shirt so no color shows through,” said Nery. “Then we made a plan on paper, but we didn’t know the sketches would be judged, so we lost some points there.”
While layers chilled, the bakers created frosting flowers on parchment paper, and chilled them separately before putting on the cake. They used a mound of buttercream to make a dome base for the flowers on the cake’s top.
Eleanor Nery ’24 and Olivia Oxton celebrate their gold medal at the 2023 SkillsUSA Competition in Bangor.
According to Tamburo, Nery and Oxton worked particularly well as a team when it came to “communication and teamwork. Of course, they have culinary skills, but they were one of the only teams smiling and talking to each other during the competition. Their cake was beautiful and showed piping skills. The borders, flowers, and filigrees were amazing, and they should be really proud of the work that they did. All of their hard work culminated in the creation of a wonderful cake that in the end, deserved to win the gold.”
As for the question on everyone’s mind: who got to eat the medal-winning cake? “We used stale cake, because it’s more stable for building the layers,” Nery said. “No one really wanted to eat that cake.”
