AMHERST — A graffiti-covered section of the Berlin Wall sits side by side with the Taj Mahal and the Ming Dynasty’s Imperial Vault of Heaven, and nearby is a large rat representing its role in the Great Plague.

They are among sites and events from throughout history, as well as famed paintings such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” and Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” created in cake by Amherst Regional High School students.

For the final day before Thanksgiving break, tables in a hallway outside the school’s cafeteria were lined with the cakes, each labeled and listing ingredients, along with a sheet on which to place bids. It’s all part of the annual cake auction.

“This is great, and they’re beautiful,” said sophomore Ololara Baptiste, after viewing the cakes and then, with Liana Page, also a sophomore, bidding on a few of the 50 displayed.

Over the course of three lunch periods, students, along with faculty and staff, have an opportunity to participate in the silent auction by writing down the amounts they are willing to pay to potentially take home and enjoy a piece of history.

Though the large rat may have represented the bubonic plague, it didn’t stop the sophomores from getting into a brief, but fun, bid battle for the rodent with fellow sophomores Keira Cunniffe and Coral Pope.

“I love it,” Cunniffe said of the cake auction, adding that she could extend the bid up to $10 for the rat, but also made sure to bid on other cakes just in case. “I hope we win some cakes.”

“Every cake is so nice,” Pope said.

Shortly after the cakes were placed on the tables, some were already fetching $30 or more, including one described as a triple chocolate and fruit cake and another as apple cider and vanilla icing cake.

Wilnelia Melendez, the senior class adviser who coordinates the cake auction, said that it could raise around $600, based on the 2023 results, with students either paying in cash or via Venmo.

Once in receipt of their payments, Melendez then gives the students, or teachers, the cakes to take home.

The more money collected at the cake auction, and other events, the less the seniors will have to pay for various activities during their last year at the school, Melendez said.

Though a couple years away from benefiting from the cake auction, Page said all students like to participate. “It’s such a great way to raise money,” Page said.

Long-standing tradition

The cake auction coming on the last day of school before Thanksgiving recess is a long-standing tradition at Amherst Regional, dating to at least the 1950s, though the event was phased out in the early 2000s and wasn’t held for several years.

During the cake auction’s original run, members of the junior class would do the organizing, with members of student clubs and sports teams baking the cakes and bringing the finished product to school on that pre-Thanksgiving half day. Then, in a live auction inside the auditorium, each cake would be sold to a high bidder, with a faculty representative using the pooled resources of the teachers often paying the top price for a cake.

Some of the cakes would then be cut and shared in the cafeteria that day, while proceeds from the sale would be used by juniors to put on the senior class dinner before graduation in the spring.

But in the later years of the original cake auction, the cakes became much bigger and more elaborate, including one year depicting a retiring basketball coach, and there were increasing concerns the cakes were unwieldy and it was not possible to bring them home to serve as part of a Thanksgiving meal.

The latest iteration of the cake auction was started a decade or so ago by social studies teacher Chris Gould, a graduate of the high school in the 1980s who had fond memories of the event. Now teaching AP History, Gould developed an assignment where students would make a cake reflecting some aspect of the history lessons.

“It has to do with something we’re studying in class,” Gould said.

And since then the cake auction has grown. Gould said he appreciates that many of the 50 cakes are smaller than they used to be, and students are not trying to top each other in size and scope, where they were so large that significant amounts of frosting held them together. In fact, the Berlin Wall was one of the smaller cakes, but drew a lot of curiosity due to its realism.

“In a sense, it’s now a little more humane,” Gould said. “I think this is really working out well.”

Sword of Akbar

The material being taught in the history class inspired Colin Glennon and Sam Woodruff, both juniors, to create a cake that looks like a large sword that belonged to Akbar the Great, the third Mughal emperor in the 16th century.

“I thought it would be simple to make it,” Glennon said

The students spent about three hours forming the cake into the sword and its handle, baking it and then frosting it. “We used chocolate and vanilla cake mix from Big Y,” Glennon said.

Akbar is known for beheading the Indian king Hemu following the Second Battle of Panipat, so the students used some red food dye to replicate a bloody sword tip.

“It’s bloodied because he used it to kill Hemu,” Glennon said.

One of those interested in buying the sword of Akbar cake was senior Quinn Strehorn, who said he bid on that and several others, though $17 was his limit, based on what he got from his mother. He placed $2 on a handful of cakes and planned to return at the final lunch period to make sure he won at least one of the cakes.

“I hope to have the cake for Thanksgiving,” Strehorn said, adding that the quality will be high, based on his having eaten cakes in previous years. “I think any of them will be really good.”

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.