In Teen Scene: All's fair in love, war and cupcakes

Note: This is a special look inside 'Teen Scene', a semi-annual special edition that features and focuses on teenagers in the parish. This article, along with several other features is available inside the Jan. 20 edition of The Crowley Post-Signal. Buy yours today to read more.

Any loyal Food Network viewer knows about “Cupcake Wars.”

And any viewer of the show should automatically have host Justin Willman's puns and the criticism of judges Candace Nelson and Florian Bellanger ringing through their heads as four of the country's top cupcake bakers, and their assistants, compete for bragging rights, $10,000 and the chance for exposure at some major event.

Things were sort of like that at Iota High recently, when the food and nutrition classes of teacher Dinah Istre competed in their own version of Cupcake Wars.

“They put a lot of work into it, I can tell you that,” said Istre.

For the students in these classes there was no $10,000 (unfortunately), but there were definitely bragging rights to be had.

The rules for the classes were simple, as explained by Istre. First, each class – second, fourth and fifth hours – voted upon a theme for the competition, then, pertaining to the theme, each class voted on a special ingredient which had to be incorporated into the cupcake, its icing, etc., somehow. The results of that were as follows:

• Second hour: Mardi Gras theme, special ingredient – cream cheese.

• Fourth hour: summer/beach theme, special ingredient – pineapples.

• Fifth hour: circus theme; special ingredient – cotton candy. 

Students finalized their displays and cupcakes for judging in class and the judges voted for each class the following hour (second was voted in third, and so on). The voting was all done anonymously to ensure fairness. And, all cupcakes, icing and displays were hand-made.