Amanda Molitor ’14
With the creation of the new Upper School Baking Club this year, Episcopal can now consider many of its students culinary artists. The club was created by Chandler Burke ’12 and Kira Nakahara ’12, along with Sarah Perkins, V Form Dean, as the faculty advisor. Perkins described the club as “a group of students who are interested in baking, not merely to produce baked goods from mixes, but to also learn about variations in technique and ingredients that enable them to enjoy the art of creating the treat, as well as enjoying it afterwards.” Burke said, “[The Baking Club is] a group of kids at EA who have a passion for baking. There was kind of a gap in the EA community before. We all just love to bake or cook, but mainly bake.” While the Baking Club was only introduced to students this year, Burke and Nakahara were inspired to create the club in the spring of last year. “Over last spring break, I called [Kira] and I was like ‘Kira! We should start a baking club! I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before!’” said Burke, who became good friends with Nakahara through their shared passion for baking. Burke and Nakahara, hearing of Perkins’ love of baking though her Seal column last year, approached her and asked if she would like to be the faculty advisor for the club. “I thought it sounded like a fantastic idea,” said Perkins. Come fall 2011, the Baking Club had a very successful club fair presence, with upwards of 100 students signing up. Natalie Stuart ’14, a member of the club and an avid baker, was extremely excited to see the new addition to the list of clubs offered to students. “[I joined] because I love to bake and I love when people eat my baking,” said Stuart. “The meetings are packed,” said Perkins. “[The student response has] been phenomenal. I have to say, Kira and Chandler have been so organized, but also so enthusiastic as to draw people in and also let them know what the requirement is.” Gianna Pileggi ’14, a member of the club, said, “Members are kicked out after not baking for three consecutive meetings, but this is a good rule because it is a way to make sure that all members contribute to the club instead of just taking advantage of the hard working bakers by only attending meetings to eat. They don’t want certain people to be baking for everyone every week.” Every Monday in the athletic center lobby, (which, according to Burke, is “out of the way, but good because we don’t want to be a cookie soup kitchen,”) students will find the Baking Club taste testing each baked good. “We have to do the club on Mondays because during the week, it’s too difficult for students to bake with all their homework. By meeting on Monday, they can bring it in fresh,” said Burke. “It’s pretty casual. … Everybody brings in their baked goods, we’ll set them on the table, and tell people to eat. Then we’ll pick a number and assign it to each baked good and then people vote for the top three that they liked. Kira and I will tally those up, and we’ll send an email out asking the people who had the best recipes to send us the recipes.” With the massive amount of participation the club receives, there are always plenty of leftovers after each meeting. Perkins has talked to Susan Swanson, head of Community Outreach, about possibly bringing the baked goods to places such as UCHC instead of department offices or home with students; however, the club has already begun sharing what they’ve made with the community. “What we’ve done so far, outside of our internal meetings, is ‘Random Acts of Baking’ the week following the death of Tom Bowman. It was our articulation of the Random Act of Kindness movement,” said Perkins. “The kids baked and we dropped the treats off and gave them away for free. We don’t intend to sell anything because we’re not necessarily interested in making a profit as much as we are sharing our love of it with the community.” Burke and Nakahara even plan on using the Baking Club to help them with their senior projects. “Kira and I were thinking about, as a senior project, compiling all those recipes from each meeting and make it into some sort of publication, whether it be just for the school or, if we actually went to a publisher, that would be pretty sweet,” Burke said with a laugh.