Club members working on a recipe at one of the biweekly meetings. Credit: Courtesy of Abbie Gohrband
Four frustrated freshmen with no kitchen in their residence hall and deeply missed homemade baked goods satisfied their cravings by creating Buckeyes for Baking. Now, one year after the student organization’s creation, more than 20 members gather twice a month to bake a variety of goods.
“We were living in Baker East and kind of upset because there was no kitchen, so we decided, why not just make a club about it,” said Abbie Gohrband, a second-year in food engineering and the club’s founding president.
The organization meets every other Friday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. to try out new recipes using the kitchen at the RPAC. During meetings, members bake treats and play games while their creation is in the oven, Gohrband said.
“We split up the tasks into smaller groups, and we divide the recipe up, so everyone has a little something to do,” she said.
Most of their recipes come from Pinterest and include seasonal ingredients.
“In the fall we did apple muffins and all kinds of pumpkin dishes,” Gohrband said.
In the first meeting of the month, members enjoy their baked goods themselves, but the batch made during the second meeting is donated to OSU Star House, a Columbus resource center for homeless youth.
“The service aspect, even though it’s not much, you still feel like you’re doing something,” said Jordan Amann, a second-year in public health and one of the club’s founders and current treasurer and.
Gohrband said Star House is one of the few charities she’s found that accepts homemade goods, and the OSU connection made it an obvious choice.
“Especially in college, it’s hard to be super involved, but with this it’s easy to donate what we make and put a smile on someone else’s face,” she said.
The only on-campus fundraiser the club has done was a cupcake-decorating station where students could decorate a cupcake after making a donation, but the club’s leadership hopes to add more fundraising events in the future in order to help lower the $25 yearly dues for members, Amann said. The dues are used to purchase ingredients.
“When it comes to volunteering, we want to go to some soup kitchens and continue to develop the volunteer aspect of the club, so members have the opportunity to do more than dropping off baked goods once a month if they want,” Amann said.
The club is open to anyone who has an interest in baking and accepts new members at any point during the year.
