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Throughout 2017, home economics students across the country have been demonstrating their creative flair as they took on the 2017 Recipe Challenge developed by McCormick Foods and the Home Economics Institute of Australia Inc. Entries flooded in from as far afield as Darwin to Kalgoorlie to Kingscliffe, from schools large and small. The judges were stunned with the creativity, cooking skills and explanations of what the young students created.

While the criteria was tough, the Year 9/10 students revelled in the challenge and showed just what they could do when confronted with designing dishes with ingredients such as Baharat Seasoning,
Skhug Sauce, Sweet Pepper Syrup and incorporating culinary techniques such as smoking egg yolks. Now in its fifth year, the Challenge presented Year 9 and Year 10 home economics students with
the opportunity to explore the McCormick® Flavour Forecast® 2017 Report in detail. The report is developed by home economists, sensory scientists, chefs and food experts from across the world and is a combination of emerging trends and flavours that offer a taste of what’s next on the global menu. The challenge was for students, individually, or in teams, to develop three original recipes that support the McCormick® Flavour Forecast® 2017.

While the McCormick signature Flavour Forecast report is a global initiative, Australia is proud to be the first country taking the trends and flavours into the classrooms of the next generation of foodies. McCormick has been inspired and impressed to see how the students have adapted the 2017 flavours to create their own original dishes. Using a given set of ingredients, plus added ingredients of their choice, students were to design, cook and present three dishes that reflected the Flavour Forecast themes. They were also required to address the added constraints related to budget and health.

The students’ written responses revealed that many of them had never heard of some of the ingredients, let alone tasted them. Totally fearless, students experimented with ideas and flavour combinations that produced amazing meals.

The HEIA judging panel agreed that the entries were outstanding. Students really excelled and exceeded all expectations for their age group. Some stunning thinking and creativity went into their entries. It was inspirational to see how young Year 9/10 home economics and food technology students used curriculum design processes to come up with innovative use of the set ingredients. It was clear students used active reflection and evaluation at each stage of the process and acted on these to amend their recipe and presentation to come up with stunning results. For each team to do this for three different recipes was amazing.

Congratulations to St Clare’s College students and staff!