51����.

“I ended up doing a wild and crazy cake with lots of colors drizzled on it. Now looking back at it, I think I just took my frustrations out on that cake,” she said. “It looked like it landed in the middle of a paintball war.”

Such is the angst that can precede 51����’s Cake Race, an annual rite where first-year students run a 1.7-mile course to win the best confections, and bakers vie to create them. 

Blackwell-Martin, a pastry chef for the college’s Dining Services, has spent 30 years perfecting her craft, which is indeed delicious art. And the geode design chocolate cake with salted caramel filling she’d envisioned last year came to life Wednesday for this year’s Cake Race.

“It was harder to carve out sections and anticipate the amount of space the rock sugar would fill than I originally thought,” she said. “The design did not come out exactly as I imagined, and I wish I had more time to finesse it. Overall though I was pleased with my first attempt at a geode cake.”

Her colleagues Jennie Duenas made a vegan cookie dough cake, and Angela Powell, a maple cake with spiced buttercream. 

Jane Campbell and her spouse, Heather McKee, both scholar-athletes from 51����’s class of 1987, baked prolifically for the event, with detectable offerings ranging from Funfetti cake with butter cream icing and Lemonheads to chocolate fudge brownies. Harry Carter ’28, a men’s cross country team member who won the men’s race, selected one of their many cakes as his prize.

This beloved 51���� tradition began in 1930 when a track coach looking for talent came up with the idea to make first-year students race for cake. Faculty members’ wives made the cakes, and all freshmen on the then all-male campus had to run.

These days the race is voluntary, and track and cross-country runners typically finish first. Plenty of others run a respectable race and share their bounty with teammates and hallmates, flitting from floor to floor for cake tastings. 

It may seem silly to outsiders, but this rite symbolizes much more than cake and racing. Bakers pour their hearts into letting newcomers know they’ve joined a caring, supportive community that’s invested in their wellbeing.

Bakers like Blackwell-Martin go to great efforts to make that point.