Learning about the ABCs by Janet G. '27

The Apple Bake Competition is an annual event held by the Burton-Conner⁠01 one of the dorms at MIT, also where i live GRAs ⁠02 Graduate Resident Advisors, aka Real Adults who occasionally bake us goodies and check up on us to make sure that we're being functional and eating edible food in the Fall of each year. It’s a competition where people bake a lot of goods with apples, to celebrate the bountiful fall harvest of apples and give us all a reason to use the massive hordes of apples we gain from the yearly apple-picking outings that MIT dorms help subsidise. For most people, it’s a great reason to wander down to the Porter Room on Sunday morning and grab some of the delicious dishes that people have cooked up.

For Conner 2, my floor, Apple Bake is a little more serious. It’s on our shirts, it’s in our blood, it’s the colour of our floor (apple-red). In the words of one of our floor chairs, Haylea B. ‘27, “Apple Bake is one of two mandatory C2 events per year”, so we might be a little obsessed with Apple Bake. It’s often because we have really good bakers and cooks on our floor, but it’s also because we are just really competitive people who want to defend our floor’s consecutive 25+ year history of winning Apple Bake. This year, we also decided to bring back our Varsity Apple Bake jerseys,⁠03 so i would attach a photo, but they're not here yet :( so we DEFINITELY couldn’t lose. 

I am the Resident Peer Mentor⁠04 to be clear the M does not stand for anything else, contrary to what my floor frosh will tell you. also resident peer mentor is basically an upperclassman who helps provide occasional food and advice to the freshman for my floor this year. I also happen to be a little obsessed with tradition of Apple Bake. Therefore, this year, my lovely frosh and I decided to get the tradition going early. For our first Floor Frosh Social event, they pulled together to bake a lovely little apple pie; it was an incredible test of teamwork, and in true C2 tradition, also test of the fire alarms. ⁠05 so i admit that we historically have not had the best track record with setting off fire alarms in burton conner… IN RECENT YEARS we've made a recovery but perhaps we've had an awkwardly good track record with letting the whole building know whenever we’re cooking We thankfully saved the suite before they set off the whole building though, so I guess we’re innovating and improving from this tradition. 

so fanning the wifi modem does not help with soothing the angry smoke detectors. also disclaimer no children were harmed in the process of making our floor nicknames

Every year, our floor has a sweet little spreadsheet going for Apple Bake — because even if we’re the smallest floor in all of Burton-Conner,⁠06 we only have 28 people on our floor, which makes us the smallest floor along with C4 this does not stop us from submitting the largest number of entries. While quantity does not always mean quality (for instance, last year I hauled myself up at the bright and early time of 10am to peel some apples and print out some sus photos for some “experimental apple art”),⁠07 for dignity purposes i will not be attaching photos we have sufficiently incredible bakers and chefs to make some pretty darn incredible dishes. 

Most of our work started Saturday evening. The entire floor smelled amazing by the time I came back around 9pm; as I quote Lidia P. ‘27, “the floor smells like ASMR for my nose”. 

Now, I will be the first to say that I am not a baker. Unfortunately, this means that I am mostly useless in the context of Apple Bake, so I decided to try my hand at a few sculptures this year. I dragged Albert T. ‘26 with me to help me ideate and peel apples, and we spent about an hour trying to peel some apples in order to craft a “Big Ben” to pay homage to a sculpture from a few years ago. The attempt ended once I accepted that I could not plausibly find a way to stick long strips of apple peel onto a can of Peach Monster (don’t ask). At this point, we were too many apples in, so instead Albert had a moment of divine inspiration and we decided to go find some apple sculptures on Pinterest; these were MUCH more doable and below we have the end results! 

let's start with the finished product, which i was very proud of :) isn't our cardamom-eyed owl cute?? (the cardamom is the featured ingredient this year)

so SOMEONE doesn't actually know how to peel apples so we had to do some teaching first...

progress was made. a lot of apples were destroyed (and munched upon)

and then we gave up... and look at what we cooked up instead!

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In the meanwhile, other people were cooking much more edible dishes. 

Haylea B. '27 next to some delicious apple cookies

progress is hard though. Haylea decided to make four dishes at once, which is both very impressive and terrifying

yummy apple pastries by Eleni M. '25

so aside from my carving, some other interesting knife action was going on our floor

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When Sunday morning came around, our suites were still busy cooking. You could hear HOTTOGO blasting through the floor as the lovely wakeup alarm for everyone, and we pushed through to get all our dishes in downstairs.

sunday morning is grind time. featuring Alex Z. '28 and not featuring the interesting content on their fridge

i decided to wake up and do some more apple carving with Victoria H. '28 and Achyuta A. '28 (not pictured)

prime baker Lou W. '25 making her award-winning pastries

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BC began swarming the delectable goods. 

grand weather for a grand competition

the line died down enough when i arrived so i could snap this photo

some delicious cakes

more food

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My apple carvings didn’t win, which was a little unfortunate, but I can’t really complain when I was competing against these masterpieces:

the winning entry for craziest cardamom, by Abby S. '26 from B2!

all the art entries were very cool – people are surprisingly good at making art with apples? peep someone taking a fry from the apple fries i carved!

also i was absolutely shattered that this entry from Sam N. '28 did not win "would've been better without the cardamom" entry. like come on....

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The performances were also pretty great:

Alex Z. '28 and Luke I. '28 performing "splitting", where they each took an apple and split it to the massive cheers of BC residents. don't ask why but it was definitely entertaining

B3rd performed "hydration". they hydrated. it's basically what you would think it is!

and C2 as a whole did a goofy little rendition of Hot To Go, which Jaclyn T. '25 and Sam N. '28 ideated together in about 30 minutes. all i can say is that we had a lot of fun and maybe not a lot of coordination

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even though it was a little goofy, we still won the performance category with our Hot To Go dance. We also picked up wins in some other categories, and at this point it should come as no spoiler to say that WE WON APPLE BAKE AGAIN! 

🍎🍎🍎

26+ years. Our legacy lives on 🍁🍎🇬🇧

Appendix:

Final results: 

First Place, C2: 9

Second Place, B3rd: 6

Third Place, B2: 5

Fourth Place, B5: 2

Fifth Place, B4: 1

Sixth Place, C5: 1

Seventh Place (equal): some floors who i will not name. hmMmMm some floors need to get on their game…

 

All winnable categories:

🧁 SWEET:
Cakes/breads 🍰
Pies/tarts 🥧
Cookies 🍪
Frozen ❄️
Other sweets 🍮

🧂 SAVORY:
General Savory 🥘

🔥 COOKING METHOD:
Stovetop 🍳
Sliced ✂️
Whole 🍏
Raw 🥗
Drinks 🍹
Microwave 🧨

🎨 ART (doesn’t require physical apples, but should be apple-related):
Looks/shaped like an apple (but edible!) 🍏✨
General art 🎨
Performance (will take place at 1:30pm) 🎤

🥬 DIETARY RESTRICTION FRIENDLY:
Vegan 🌱
Kosher Ⓚ
Gluten-free 🌾

🧡 FEATURED INGREDIENT: CARDAMOM
Most Creative Cardamom 🌟
Craziest Cardamom 🤪
Would’ve been better without the Cardamom?? 🤔

🏅All items were considered for the general categories:
Most Creative ✨
People’s Choice Award 🗳️
Kid’s Choice Award 🎈
Dog’s Choice Award 🐶