Celebrity Food Blogger Jeff Cutler judges birthday cook-off

April 8, 2013





That’s some clear self back patting in the title, but it’s all true. With the success of NomX3 and my recent coverage of food events all over the globe, I’m now being requested to attend and judge food events.

In this case, the date was Saturday, April 6 and I was in Arlington, MA to judge a cooking competition at a birthday party. With ten 14-year-old chefs in attendance, I was served an appetizer, a meal and a dessert. The cooks all had a list of required ingredients for each course and then they had access to a pantry of other ingredients.

While I don’t have all my notes – or the names of the winning team(s) – we chose a winner in each round – I do have photos and some thoughts to share on each course. Here are the photos with my comments underneath each picture.

Amazing dessert with pudding, cookie dough, whipped cream, honey and chocolate chips. There was also a mandatory use of shredded carrots – which I wasn’t too fond of and I told the organizer that it was a silly ingredient.

Here you can see the carrots, but the rest of the ingredients shined in this execution. Chocolate, some honey drizzle on the spoon and clearly some tasty fruit leather – another mandatory ingredient.

This is one of the tables before the competition began – it’s set up for the appetizer round with bread, goldfish crackers, some vinagrete and cheese.

This was the first round. You can see how the size in some of the dishes varied. The one on the left was a HUGE mouthful of flavor. I believe in this round the center spoon was the winner.

Here’s how one of the prep tables looked after the competition. Like a hurricane of chefs had hit it.

And here is the photo of the birthday cake after all the festivities. Had a great time and ate some great food. Thanks to all who competed and attended!