State Champions!

Written by Ms Katrina Wheaton

In Semester 1, the Hey Food tech class curriculum was centred around the McCormick Flavour Forecast Recipe Challenge - a national competition open to all schools in Australia. After submitting our entry earlier in the year, just recently, our school was announced as the winning submission for all of Victoria and Tasmania. A stunning result!

The recipe challenge was designed by McCormick Foods Australia and the Home Economics Institute of Australia for Year 9 and 10 students and is aligned with the Australian curriculum. The challenge was for students to develop three original contemporary recipes to support McCormick’s Flavour Forecast – the flavour trends that are expected to drive global innovation in food.

The Hey students worked in 3 teams of 3 with each group working on a different flavour trend. The final recipes produced were:

Smoked Cinnamon Breakfast Pudding (Sweet and Seasonal Satisfaction trend)

Charred Lemon Garlic Chicken with Zesty Quinoa Salad (Empowered Eating trend)

Dukkah Crusted Lamb Skewers, root vegetable salad and roti (Global Finds trend)

Each recipe was tested three times making adjustments after each trial. The students learnt to focus on flavour and not rely on fat or sugar for taste (discretionary foods were to be avoided).

In addition to developing the recipes, the students needed to cost the recipes, document their progress, style their dishes for photography purposes and write a justification and reflection on the task.

It was a huge undertaking and a big thank you to Hannah Foley who checked over Hey’s final submission many times before it was submitted.

The students were thrilled to learn just recently that were the Vic/Tas State Winners. The judges said that they ‘loved our entry, the recipes, the justification and the thought put into using local ingredients’.

As State finalists, the students win for the school a Tupperware Prize Pack worth $1059 and a McCormick Spice pack worth $500.