Baking their way into the school scene

From brownies to lasagna, the baked goods club, run by Jack Harris ’22, provides an assortment of baked treats baked by its very own members and a variety of activities at its every-other-weekly meetings, such as movies, card games and Kahoot games.  

The baked goods club, or the Fellowship for Baked Goods Eaters, as it is listed on the West High School website, began at the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year by Harris and some of his friends.

“I was just with my friends at lunch and we were trying to come up with a club to start… we kind of wanted to start our own because that sounded fun and baked goods club was the one that everybody agreed with,” Harris said. 

According to Harris, the baked goods club has an atmosphere similar to other low-key, non-academic clubs, such as kazoo club, but “offers something slightly different,” including the food. “There’s always leftover food too so you’ll always get enough to eat,” Harris said.

In preparation for each meeting, baking is surprisingly one of the least time-consuming activities for Harris. Creating a Kahoot game can take up to three or four hours. The Kahoot games are light-hearted, humorous, and cover a variety of topics, such as American history. “It’s really fun and there’s always a nice payoff,” Harris said. To him, the long hours spent creating the games are worth it because of how fun and entertaining they turn out.

Members of the baked goods club also get to enjoy watching movies, although it is a less common activity since it takes more than one meeting to finish. The films that have been shown at their meetings include “Ferris Bueller’s Day off,” “Garfield: The Movie,” and most recently, “Monsters, Inc.”

A member of the club, Alex Rohm ’22, is new to it this year. He is friends with several of the members, including Harris. 

Rohm said that the club is more interactive than others he is involved in, partly due to the fact that many of the members bring in the baked goods themselves rather than just the leaders of the club doing it.  Members are required to sign up for a day when they will bring the treats and take turns every meeting. Rohm himself does not bake often outside of the baked goods club, but he, like other students who attend the club, bakes just to be able to contribute. 

“One of my favorite things is just how it is a lot of activity; it’s not just the food,” Rohm said. 

Rohm has been able to make new friends and spend time with those whom he was already friends with due to being in the club.

“I’ve met some new people, and I suppose I see some of my older friends, because school isn’t the best about that [being a place to see your friends],” Rohm said.