Around the world with Cake and Pizza

Countdown - Foods for Special Occasions

In Term 4, Year 9 Food Technology students have been working on a unit of work called “Countdown - Foods for Special Occasions”.  As part of their assessment, they were asked to create a culturally inspired New Year’s Eve cake. Students were given an opportunity to practice their baking and icing skills before venturing into their own creations.

This gave the students a better basis to build their skills in cake making and decorating. Students commented on how well prepared they felt going into the practical. The day was met with loads of exciting energy and creativity as the students started to express their vision of what their cakes would look like.

The design scope was left open to interpretation when we talked about cultural inspiration.  They could use the colours, flavours or icons of their chosen culture. This meant that students could express their cultural take in any shape or form. It simply had to be a celebration cake with the theme being New Year’s Eve 2021, with a cultural twist.

We had cakes representing many different countries around the world, from Brazil, Hawaii, China, Malta, New Zealand, Mexico, Japan, Australia and Lebanon.  Students deployed skills in covering cake in fondant, and modelling characters, chocolate moulding, icing skills, piping and fresh and fake flower decorating too.

Mrs Marin and her students were very proud of their efforts and creative skills achieved and demonstrated. The students were supportive and respectful of each other and their efforts. 

Year 9 and Mrs Marin

Food Technology, 2020 

A Slice of Heaven - Pizza topping challenge

Last term, Year 9 Food Technology were given the opportunity to design and make a brand new culturally inspired pizza topping that had to be unique......and oh....were they unique!

After working through the Design Process and careful consideration, we planned and tested our new pizza designs. He had a chance to practice in class making the dough and do it at home multiple times to make sure it was perfect and we knew what we were doing.

Our class had a variety of countries and toppings to choose from but making a unique cultural pizza was harder than we all thought. Thankfully, our teacher Mrs Marin was a great source of inspiration and help encouraging us to challenge ourselves and think outside the box. 

On the day, we had just over an hour to prepare and present our pizzas for the Sensory Evaluation Panel, made up of teachers we had invited to part of the panel.  They taste-tested and voted anonymously. (The teachers did not know who made which pizza).  We got to try our fellow classmates' pizzas once the teachers had completed assessing our pizzas creations.

They were all really good and it was interesting to taste different countries' flavours and our peers' ideas.  We had pizzas from Mexico, Chile, France, Palestine and many other countries. Some stand-out delicious inventions were Jessica's American Fruit Pizza, Alison’s Swedish Cinnamon Roll Pizza and Lara’s Mexican Taco Pizza, Ella’s Tiramisu Pizza and Diana’s Spanish Chorizo Pizza, alongside so many other amazing and unique pizza toppings. 

It was a great experience, we really learnt a lot about Food Product Development and enjoyed the process.

by Lara Bianchi and Jessica Peters

Year 9 Food Technology, 2020