Carmelised
Kate Marsh
Carmel College
Year 13 Food Technology
Teacher: Sandy Goonan
Carmel College student Kate Marsh achieved a highly professional outcome with her Year 13 Food Technology project, creating a cookbook as a fundraiser for her school. Kate's project spanned Food Technology, Photography and Design, truly testing the skills and resolve of the 18-year-old.
Kate was first approached by her Food Technology teacher Sandy Goonan to create a fundraising cookbook for Carmel College that would reflect the values of the school and involve the students and wider community.
Kate decided to take on this huge task, first identifying some of its key challenges – time being her most urgent concern, considering the enormity of the project.
With the College as her client and parents, students and teachers as stakeholders, Kate helped establish a committee that would meet each fortnight to plan each step of the cookbook's progression and give feedback and ideas on major decisions on the book's creation. A specialist school publishing firm who agreed to publish the book also contributed to these meetings, as well as donating a significant amount of time and resources to help Kate throughout the project.
Kate then began market research, looking at other school cookbooks and some of the more popular commercial cookbooks available, taking note of elements she liked as well as looking into popular trends such as traditional recipes made with a modern twist.
After several consultations, Kate was advised by the publishers that her original goal of 150 recipes was too ambitious given the timeframe and her brief was redefined. "We decided to focus on sweet food and have different sections such as baking, desserts, after dinner treats, frozen treats and special requirement recipes, with approximately 50 recipes would be much more manageable."
Kate also felt that a focus on sweets would work well in incorporating themes of the school with section titles such as Heavenly Treats and Divine Sweets, and would create a specific niche for the book.
As she relied on families and friends of the school for contributions, Kate's primary concern was getting enough recipes, so she created a recipe submission template and emailed it to people on the school's database. These templates had a number of specifications, including that the recipes be original enough to avoid copyright and that they be 'tried and true'.
But Kate soon realised that not nearly enough recipes were coming in so she visited classes in the school, offering cupcakes to staff, and a chance to model in the cookbook to students, in return for each contributed recipe. This, coupled with an article in the local paper, greatly increased awareness of the project within the community and recipes began flooding in. "These initiatives attracted a lot of attention: students wanted to be models, mothers wanted their daughters to be in the book and the staff became more aware of my project," Kate says.
Kate couldn't test all of the recipes herself and recruited students and teachers to help. To minimise personal bias in the decision-making, she also worked with her CREST mentor Eleanor McKay to develop an evaluation template with ratings for difficulty, appearance, taste and texture of each recipe and space for suggestions to improve the method or ideas on how it could be photographed.
With over 100 recipes created and sampled, Kate found the recipe trialling process extremely arduous and time-consuming and she had to manage her time precisely to get everything done. She also had to make sure that all the recipes were read through carefully so all the necessary ingredients were bought before testing began and that the time booked in the school kitchen would not be wasted.
"This was the best and the worst part of the project for me," Kate says. "It was really yummy, but it took so long and by the end I seriously never wanted to bake again!"
The evaluated recipes were then compiled and Kate moved into the photography component of the book. After consulting with the publisher on the type of photography needed, Kate realised she had to quickly find a professional photographer. A family friend Michelle Keller, finally offered to do the work free of charge. "At this stage we only had a few weeks left, so this was really music to our ears," Kate says.
Kate worked closely with Michelle, testing different approaches to the photography to find the right angles, lighting and set pieces to visually enhance the food as much as possible. Kate also arranged for Michelle to photograph a series of scenes involving groups of Carmel College students, preparing or eating some of the recipes in a variety of situations from high tea to picnics and pre-ball functions. These scenes introduced each section and told a visual story throughout the book, something Kate feels helped to get across the schools character strongly and give the book an important point of difference.
Throughout the photography process, Kate made the most efficient use of time by organising with families well in advance to create their own recipes then bring them in on specific days for photography. She also organised her model's time by contacting them through social networking sites such as Facebook.
To save costs, Kate borrowed props such as plates, glasses and vases from local businesses. "That was such a great help, and without that I don't think it would have turned out nearly as good as it did," Kate says.
Carmel College is a Catholic school, so Kate also arranged for some photos to be taken of the Mercy Sisters and important spiritual areas within the school to portray some of the school's underlying values.
Kate now had all the material ready and it was time to make some final decisions on how it was to be presented.
An area of constant contention throughout the many meetings of the project was the name of the book, with students preferring Slice of Heaven and adults wanting Carmelised. Kate eventually went with Carmelised because more adults would be buying the book. The name also contributed some visual themes for the design, with a colour scheme including caramels, toffees, browns, gold and creams.
Kate then took her text and images to the publishers, who transformed this raw material into a digital mock-up. Kate then spent several hours working with the publishers finalising details such as fonts, colours and layout to create the final outcome.
In her finished outcome, Kate has met and surpassed the expectations of everyone involved in the project, producing a beautifully designed cookbook that reflects the spirit of the college while being highly marketable.
Kate learnt a huge amount in this project and increased her own skills in areas such as communication and time management invaluably. "I definitely feel I can handle Uni after finishing this," Kate says.
Kate's tremendous effort in producing what is both a successful Food Technology and Graphic Design outcome resulted in her attaining a Gold CREST award, Technology scholarship and Level 3 NCEA with excellence. Kate is the first student to have ever achieved this.
Gold Crest assessor, Carol Pound is extremely impressed by Kate's achievement. "Kate really has a backbone of steel. She has demonstrated that an 18-year-old can manage a project to produce a cookbook comparable to anything available on the market done by professionals. Kate has grown as a person and developed wonderful skills in managing technological projects and to do this alongside her other studies is an amazing achievement."
Kate plans to travel in 2011 before studying for a career in food journalism in 2012.
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