Ready Steady Bake at City College Southampton
Hampshire Fare was delighted to sponsor a new, free Doughnut Academy Day held at City College Southampton during half-term for years 10-11 pupils.
Tracy Nash, Commercial Manager, comments: “Hampshire Fare was delighted to support City College Southampton’s Doughnut Academy Day. We think this opportunity to make and bake your own doughnuts is a great way to get teenagers into the kitchen environment and learning new skills!”
Julie Hancock, Bakery Lecturer, City College Southampton, explains: “This is the first year the event has been held, but we are looking to run more courses like this in the future during holidays to inspire the next generation of chefs, but also for young people to try new skills. Hampshire Fare’s sponsorship of the event is very valuable to us as it means we can run the event at no cost to the students, which means everyone has an equal opportunity to attend.”
The day was held during half term on Tuesday, 22nd February. No experience was required, although the course was aimed at young budding bakers, guiding them through the process of making a variety of doughnuts from start to finish. The workshop aimed to be both instructive and relaxed with lots of tips provided throughout. All the learning took place in the College’s state of the art training kitchen with a recipe sheet provided so that the students can practise baking doughnuts at home. Just for fun there was also a prize for the best looking and tasting doughnuts on the day.
Tracy Nash continues: “We had no problem persuading two of our corporate friends to attend as doughnut judges on the day, although we all agreed we needed to eat more lightly the evening before, to leave room for tasting!”
One of the judges, Simon Davidson, NFU Mutual Bournemouth, Isle of Wight & New Forest, responds: “Thank you to the contestants, City College and Hampshire Fare for the invitation to judge the doughnut baking. I was delighted to be here because competitions like this help encourage and inspire young people to learn how to cook and potentially follow a career in hospitality. I was amazed by the talent on show. The quality of the treats they produced made the hard task of judging even harder.”
Another judge, Maxine Nutting, solicitor in the Commercial Litigation team at Trethowans, swapped contract disputes for doughnut disputes for the day. She commented: “It was such a pleasure to watch the students hard at work baking, and then see (and taste) their fantastic final creations. The standard of all of the doughnuts was very impressive. I especially enjoyed all of the pink iced ones!”
The students were equally enthusiastic, as Nicole explains: “I did this day as I have baked since I was five years old, but I have never made doughnuts before. I loved learning something new.”
The overall winner was Ellia, who adds: “I signed up to try something different and I loved it! It was great to push myself out of my comfort zone.”
Julia Hancock concludes: “I am really pleased everyone enjoyed it – judges and contestants. The feedback I had from the 12 students who took part was very positive. Every student produced a selection of doughnuts and finishes. The standard was amazing. I could not believe how good some of them were at moulding the dough; shaping skills normally take a lot of practise. The students were also very creative with their decorating. A couple of the students are thinking of coming into the industry and two others are set to join us in September, so this was good experience for them. They were really pleased with the day. All said they thoroughly enjoyed it and had a great time.”
