Mercer County Technical Education Center’s culinary and engineering students are once again sharpening their knives and tightening bolts as they prepare to represent MCTEC in West Virginia’s Culineering Challenge — the state’s inventive mash-up of culinary arts and engineering modeled after the Netflix series Baking Impossible. The West Virginia Department of Education lists MCTEC (the “MCTEC Culineers”) among the nine CTE teams selected to compete in the 2025 Culineering Challenge.
This year’s Culineering theme, “Tea Time,” asks teams to build playable mini-golf courses that integrate edible components inspired by West Virginia tourism regions and include at least one interactive or moving feature. The event is scheduled as part of WVDE’s 2025 program of CTE competitions and activities.
MCTEC brings strong momentum into the challenge. In November 2023 MCTEC students won the state Culineering competition with an aquatic entry — an engineer-designed robotic vessel that carried desserts prepared by culinary students through an underwater course — earning the team top honors and prize funding for their programs. That history underlines how well the school’s ProStart/baking & pastry and pre-engineering students collaborate across disciplines. The six students competing this year are Audrina Ellison, Katelyn Waldron, Brianna Asbury, Dean Ross, Cory Thomas, and Caiden Cox.
Behind the scenes, each Culineering team is built like a small startup: two students handle culinary, two handle engineering/mechanics, one manages social media and promotion, and a builder helps construct the course. MCTEC students have been documenting their design process, building hydraulic lifts and prototyping moving parts — the exact kind of cross-program teamwork the challenge celebrates. The six students competing this year for MCTEC are Audrina Ellison, Katelyn Waldron, Brianna Asbury, Dean Ross, Cory Thomas, and Caiden Cox.
As the competition date approaches, MCTEC’s students are focused on blending creativity, technical skill and West Virginia pride — whether that means a pastry that doubles as a playable obstacle or an engineering solution that makes edible elements come to life. For the students, teachers and community watching, the Culineering Challenge is more than a contest: it’s a hands-on career-tech classroom in a pressure cooker, and MCTEC looks poised to put another impressive entry on the course.
Please visit the Mercer County Technical Education Center’s Facebook page for updates on the competition, and watch our students complete live on October 23rd.