Competing for a year’s worth of bragging rights by attempting to bake the best chocolate chip cookie, MSU lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender student groups gathered at the first “Cookie Crunch” on Monday.
Continuing Pride Week with a simple contest, the members of Delta Lambda Phi — a national social fraternity for gay, bisexual and progressive men — sponsored the event which featured during the weeklong celebration, said Ryan Pender, a microbiology senior and the vice president of the Epsilon Pledge Class for the fraternity.
“We wanted to do something that was different, and we wanted something new,” he said. “We figured, who doesn’t like milk and cookies?”
Five teams, including Spectrum, PRIDE and TransAction, presented their versions of the best tasting chocolate chip cookie for the winning prize of a supersized Nestlé Toll House cookie. Categories of judgement ranged from one to five in taste, texture, moistness and creativity.
As participants tried to figure out secret ingredients from other groups — such as Spectrum’s espresso chocolate, TransAction’s accidental addition of croutons and PRISM’s unexpected potato chip crunch — milk and chocolate chip cookies of all kinds were passed throughout the room.
Some contestants, such as Ross Kraynak, an accounting senior and president of RING in North Neighborhood — including Mason-Abbot, Shaw and Snyder and Phillips halls — used the event to focus on combination of cookie baking and professional development.
“The entire executive board got together last night and made (cookies) together,” he said. “In addition to cookies, we did some exercises on looking back to the past few years at what worked well, what didn’t work so well and looked at ways on how we can improve for next year.”
Others, such as Amara Vear, professional writing senior and Spectrum president, thought the event itself was the secret success not just to good cookies and conversation, but to bringing the LBGT community together.
“(Events like this give) people a safe place to socialize,” she said. “It lets us be ourselves without being judged.”
Although Vear baked with a different kind of secret ingredient, Vear’s espresso chocolate cookies took home the winning title.
The fraternity also will host a fundraising event at Spiral Video and Dance Bar, 1247 Center St., in Lansing, called Circus 2011 after the Rainbow Rave at Case Hall on Saturday.
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