Young Men Cake Competition

My son, Will, is 15. (He's the one in The Beatles t-shirt.) He was responsible for planning an activity with his young men's church group and he thought it would be fun if I taught them how to bake and decorate a cake.  I was a little skeptical at first.  After all, I've fed these boys cake many, many times but none of them have ever expressed an interest in learning how to make them.  Will assured me they would love it.  Just to be sure, we decided to make the activity even more exciting by having the boys form teams and compete against each other.

I baked 2 cakes and each team had to decide what frosting and fillings they would use and how they would decorate their cakes.  This was such a fun night!  I love these boys!

On the left- Butter cake with raspberry apricot filling and whipped cream for the frosting.  These boys won best tasting cake.
On the right-Chocolate cake with chocolate ganache for the filling and cream cheese frosting.  These boys won best decorating.  (My 13 and 11 year old daughters were thrilled to be the judges.)

Team Butter Cake putting on their crumb coat.  And yes, they all know what that means now.  Each boy had to help with every step in the process.  They learned that it really is harder than it looks.

Team Chocolate cake presses oreo's to the side of their cake.  Look at that attention to detail!

They discovered that "piping is hard" but had so much fun giving it a try.