ON YOUR marks, get set, bake!

Whilst that phrase may be most remembered from the well-loved Great British Bake Off, this week students from Eastleigh College tried their hand at the culinary art.

As part of National Apprenticeship Week, which ran from Monday March 3, to Friday March 7, three teams pitted against one another in a bid to be crowned Bake-Off Apprentice Champions.

One group of Level 2 Catering Apprentices battled it out against two teams of Level 1 Catering Students in a heated competition of technical cake decorating based on the theme ‘apprenticeships’.

Each team was given an identical sponge cake, and just 40 minutes to transform it, before it was judged by fellow students and classmates.

Whilst technical decoration isn’t part of the courses they study, the apprentices took the opportunity to showcase their skills, with one group focusing on catering apprenticeships and another on the skills required.

The winning team however, Donovan Malone and Hayley Barnes, chose to top their cake with the apprenticeship tag-line ‘earn while you learn’, and said they enjoyed the event.

They said: “We’re really surprised to have won, especially as we’ve never done anything like this before.”

The bake-off style challenge was to highlight the creativity and skill gained through undertaking an apprenticeship, and to make other students aware of the opportunities on offer.