By Lizzy Thomas 

In honor of the “Hunger Games” movie release, the Middle School held its first ever cupcake baking competition on March 23. The “Hunger Games” book was the middle school’s all-community read last summer, and features prominently a character named Peeta, who is a baker.

Twenty-five students and faculty members entered the competition, while 15 students and teachers judged it. In order to participate, students were required to fill out an application that included their cupcake recipe and to bring in at least three cupcakes.

While it was originally intended that all the judges try all the cupcakes, the large number of applicants made that impossible, or at the very least unhealthy.

“When we got the 25, we were like, how are we going to do this?” one of the head judges, librarian Anna Martino, said. “The solution was that each judge taste five.”

The judges ranked the cupcakes on a one-to-four scale in each of the three categories “overall appearance,” “taste,” and “texture.” The total score for each cupcake was tallied up and winners from each table determined, before Paige Yoo ’17 was picked as the overall winner. Yoo and the other table winners were awarded iTunes giftcards.

Yoo’s chocolate cupcakes were made to look like apples.

“I just found them in a cookbook and thought they were good,” Yoo said.

Other students’ cupcakes adopted unusual shapes as well. Among the entries were a number of panda cupcakes, a hippo cupcake, two separate insect themed cupcakes, a cookie monster cupcake, and a hamburger-shaped cupcake. Oliver Friedman’s ’17 cupcake looked like a normal cupcake aside from its adornment of culinary gold leaf, but was avante garde nonetheless.

“I made avocado cupcakes, but they’re actually amazing,” Friedman said.

Librarian Maxine Lucas, who came up with the idea for the event and served as a head judge, said that next year they hope to have the contest be a charity event.

“[The event] was awesome, fantabulous, and we’ll see you next year,” Lucas said.