Paul Smith's students bake cake for 1,500 - 2008-06-16

College helps mark Franklin County bicentennial

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PAUL SMITHS – Franklin County had a birthday party – and Paul Smith's College students were the ones who let the guests eat cake.

Five students in the college's culinary arts program worked on the three-tier cake, which fed 1,500 at the county's 200th birthday celebration. The bicentennial was marked at the county fairgrounds in Malone on Saturday, June 14.

Working on the yellow cake were Laura Brockett of Clinton; Dustyn Ford of Olivebridge; Danielle Fuller of Gouverneur; Marla Joseph of Trumansburg; and Jem Secrest of Unadilla. They were supervised by Chef Bob Brown. It took more than 30 hours of labor apiece to make the cake happen.

Serving 1,500 takes some serious ingredients: 66 pounds of eggs, 50 pounds of granulated sugar, 42 pounds of shortening/butter, and 2 pounds of baking powder, to name a handful. (Moving it isn't any easier: More than a half-dozen people were required to get the cake, four feet wide by eight feet long, from the college's bakery to the refrigerated truck that hauled it away.)

In addition to the culinary program, the cake-baking was assisted by the college's facilities staff, which made the plywood platforms the cake was built on; and Hillcrest Foods and Quandt's Food Service of Vermont, which provided many of the ingredients.

Paul Smith's College is the only four-year institution of higher education in the Adirondacks. Our programs, in fields including hospitality, culinary arts, forestry, natural resources, entrepreneurship and the sciences, draw
on industries and resources available in our own backyard while preparing students for successful careers anywhere.

Contact: Kenneth Aaron, director of communications, (518) 327-6297/kaaron@paulsmiths.edu

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L-R: Dustyn Ford, Jem Secrest, Marla Joseph, Danielle Fuller, Chef Bob Brown and Laura Brockett worked on Franklin County's 200th birthday cake.

Dustyn Ford and Danielle Fuller put the finishing touches on the cake, which served 1,500.