My Past experience at ABST

Competitions

Hi Everyone,

I would like to share my experience in competing for the last two ABST competitions. 

In 2017 when I joined the London South Bank University (The National Bakery School) as a student, I was briefly told about the ABST conference. I had never entered a bakery competition before and the thought of entering one was daunting to say the least! Thankfully the third year students gave us a brief idea of what to expect and that gave me hope. 

With anticipation and excitement I sat down, read the guidelines and spoke to my lecturer about the competitions I was interested in. I finally decided to enter the IBB live piping class (This is a live competition which consists of decorating 4 miniature cakes with royal icing in the space of 2 ½ hours), the Goldex Award (sugar flower category) and the Mandy Wansell Trophy (Danish Pastries category). 

Over the next few months I started preparing for the great day.

I enjoyed every minute of the intense 2 ½ hours of piping and was so thrilled when I was awarded second place in the Live Piping category. Although I did not get a place in the sugar flowers and Danish pastry category, I enjoyed working on my pieces and was amazed to see such lovely exhibits by other students. I realised the standard was high and was not going to give up easily!

A year flew by so quickly and the next conference was on the horizon.  Once again I started preparing for the competition and decided to enter the Blandy Cup (Wedding cake) for a change as well as the IBB live piping class and Goldex award again.  

It was great fun preparing for the competitions and I had wonderful lecturers who sacrificed their time to guide me. I was privileged to have great tutors.

For the second time in a row I was awarded second place in the Live Piping category which was wonderful. Even though I was not awarded for the wedding cake category, I got a high commendation by the judges which I was really pleased about. 

If I was to summarise my experience of taking part in the ABST competitions, I would say that taking part was great fun and I would encourage every student to participate because you learn such a great deal yourself, you get to meet other like minded students and you get to see such great exhibits. Practice and hard work does pay off and taking part is the main thing!

Thanks for reading.
Caroline 
ABST Rep