Caked up

On Friday, April 18, the Nailed It! Cupcake Decorating Contest, hosted and judged by Student Activities Committee interns Ava Jones ’25 and Peyton Minor ’26, took place in the Simon Student Center. The event was inspired by Nailed It!, a comedic baking competition series in which amateur bakers vie for $10,000 cash prizes by typically abysmal attempts at replicating complicated cakes. 

“It was originally Ava’s idea, and we came up with it in our internship,” said Minor. “Honestly, once we got the idea… we just had to make a list of what we needed, so that included sprinkles, icing, food colouring, and construction paper.”

“We loved watching Nailed It, and Peyton and I love MCing, so we just thought, ‘Why not?’” said Jones. “And we had a good number of people showing up. We baked the cupcakes and prepared the ingredients for decorating. We were kind of scared that nobody would sign up, so we really had to broadcast that this was going to be a fun thing that the school doesn’t usually do.”

The cupcake decorating had a twenty-minute time limit, during which competitors frosted, sprinkled, and sculpted in a frenzy. Each team chose between the themes “Safari” and “Under the Sea.” “Winners were selected for each category based on looks and creativity,” said Jones.

Michelle Zhang ’28 teamed up with Riley Choi ’28, Rachel Zhang ’28, and Lina Park ’28. “We got ‘Under the Sea.’ Personally, I [decorated my cupcake with] my idol Tralalero Tralala because he’s under the sea. He has a six-pack—so hot, so cool,” said Zhang.

Mary Grady ’25 said, “My teammates were Gianna Anthony ’25, Talaina Jarett ’25, and William Tutt ’25. We wanted to do all the different parts under the sea. Like, we did different animals and wanted to mix it up. We used some construction paper on ours.”

Nicole Leung ’26 said, “Bao Han Pham ’25 and Thanasi Akaras ’27 were on my team. We chose ‘Safari.’ Our specific theme was Dora the Explorer. One [of us] did the monkey, one did Dora, and one did a tree. We were so confident in winning because we are so creative. Every single cupcake here was creative, but ours was Dora. It’s different. [We knew] we’re gonna win.”

Despite Leung’s optimism, her team ultimately placed second to the winning quad of Maddie Chu ’27, Ellie Yang ’27, Karin Sugiyama ’27, and Carrie Yang ’27 for the theme “Safari.”

“We were so excited and so happy because we put a lot of attention to detail into our cupcakes,” said Chu. “Our overall theme was jungle adventure, so we decorated our cupcakes with bananas, grass, and trees. We tried to think outside of the box by using paper and mixing food colouring that was very concentrated, enough so that it was black, to colour the bananas. We also used little round pearls and sprinkles as eyeballs for our monkey.”

The winners of the “Under the Sea” category were Keagan Killinger ’28, Emmie Kelley ’28, Zara Kimotho ’28, and Ally Snyder ’28.

“I was so happy. It was a surprise because there were so many amazing cupcakes out there,” said Snyder. She cited “the detail on Keagan’s cupcake” as the reason for their victory. “It’s very aesthetic. You can see the ombre of the different colours. Instead of doing all one colour, we really tried to do different shades of colours,” said Killinger. “We took our time,” added Kimotho.

“I thought it was very fun. It was really loud, but it seemed like everyone was having a really good time,” said Jones. “Everyone was going hands-on. We were intrigued by the designs.”