On April 27th, 2022 a live stream of the Cheri HazelCream Cooking Challenge was broadcast over the internet.

Held at the Cascade Culinary Institute on the campus of Central Oregon Community College, the event featured teams of top culinary students from the CCI Culinary Club, preparing appetizers, main dishes, and desserts in a culinary battle to be the best.

Based on a hybrid of popular TV cooking competitions, the twist was that all dishes will feature Cheri's HazelCream®, a dairy free milk substitute made with Oregon Hazelnuts. A panel of three judged each dish based on a combination of taste, best use of Cheri's HazelCream® and plating.

The three Judges included:

Stephen Helt, Owner and Chef at Zydeco, a well known local eatery,

Eileen Mclellan, owner of Zella Foods and a graduate of Cascade Culinary (and co-host with Cheri on 2Cooks4Allergies.com),

Michael Gesme, Music Educator, conductor of the Central Oregon Symphony, Cascade Winds Symphonic Band, and local Bend Celebrity.

While a technical glitch due to a total internet failure at the college slowed down our feed to a crawl at times and we had to use backup cellular services, the event went on as planned. We plan on editing the recording as compressed 1 hour video program and e-book.

The food was outstanding, the judges were amazed, and in the end the scores were tight, Out of possible 900 point total the difference between 1st and 2nd place came down to only 18 points.

Winning 1st place was the team made up of Noel Gray and Samantha Noe.

2nd place went to the team comprised of Lillyan Becker and Sarah Witt.

3rd but still outstanding in the quality of their food was the team of Reagan Schleich, and Claire Pierce

Thank you to all who participated, and a special thanks to all those who persevered through the less than ideal broadcast quality to watch.

You can also see a Central Oregon Daily TV news report on the competition at this link.