Whipped Baker Cafe's giant doughnut eating competition for essential workers returns

Whipped Baker Cafe owner Frances Cooper with the monstrous doughnut competitors will take on this Friday. Photo / George Novak

Sir Edmund Hillary had Mount Everest. Ernest Rutherford had the atom. Neil Armstrong had the moon.

This Friday, a group of essential workers will take on a unique and daunting challenge of their own.

The Whipped Baker Cafe's giant doughnut-eating competition for essential workers is back for a second year, with a first-place prize of a $500 voucher to shout their work mates lunch from the cafe.

Whipped Baker owner Frances Cooper said the competition, in which each participant will race to finish a doughnut about 10 inches in diameter, filled with whipped cream and lashed in chocolate, started as a way to thank Tauranga's essential workers after lockdown last year.

This year there will also be a $300 voucher for second place and a $150 voucher for third.

With teachers, paramedics, police officers, firefighters, social workers, and other essential service workers invited to take part, Cooper said there would be about 10 to 12 participants battling not only for the vouchers but for ultimate workplace bragging rights.

"We thought we'd do the same thing again because we still have our finger in this pandemic," she said.

"This year we've tried to make it bigger with more people and the extra prizes. We've had heaps of people put their hands up to nominate others and nominate themselves."

The Whipped Baker crew Frances Cooper (left), Gill Forsman, Emma James-Reis, Hamish Cooper, Charlie Martin and Aaron Cooper. Photo / George Novak

Last year, the winner was Tauranga Intermediate teacher Reuben Potaka who finished the mammoth doughnut in about 26 minutes and Cooper confirmed another teacher from the school would be back to defend the title.

Cooper said by the time the doughnut was baked, it was about 10 inches in diameter.

"Then we cut it in half and fill it with whipped cream and raspberry jam. We top it with the rest of the doughnut, cover that in chocolate ganache, cover that in chocolate, and put injections in the back of it.

"It's certainly a challenge, a real challenge. We usually sell it as a birthday cake so it's made for a lot of people, it's going to be a mouthful."

Cooper said the whole event was "just about fun".

"It's about celebrating the people that got us through Covid and did the hard yards - realising how important they are.

"That's why we did it last year, there were no big events to look forward to, so for us it was about bringing the community together to have a bit of fun and something to look forward to."

The doughnut-eating competition is being held at the Whipped Baker Cafe in Tauranga's Historic Village from 1.30pm on Friday.