Critter of the Week Bake-off winners – and this week's Critter, a native wasp

The winning Critter of the Week bake off cake Photo: supplied

We were incredibly impressed by all of the entries in the inaugural Critter of the Week Bake-off and judging was very difficult.

However there can only be one winner, and it is... Jasmin Hollister and her friend Alex Nicholl from Lyttleton for their Powelliphanta cake.

The cake impressed us with its detail and looks very like the actual snail as you can see from the gallery below.

Jasmin and Alex win a trip for two to Wellington and a guided tour of Zealandia!

Here they are working on their winning entry:

The inspiration: A powelliphanta snail

The final result -

The final result

Finding out they had won!

We also awarded Critter of the Week t-shirts to these five highly commended entries:

Catherine Field-Dodgson and her daughter poppy were highly commended for their titiwai glow worm cake

Ruth Korver and Miriam Bowden were highly commended for their four spined weevil cake

Sabine Barrett was highly commended for her Cicada Cake

Sharyn Gibson was highly commended for her Tuatara

And 9 year old Taman Mladenov was highly commended for his Great White Shark

And the Critter of the Week:

Think ‘wasp’, think ‘yellow and black’ and ‘sting!’ 

But in Aotearoa, far outnumbering those few easily recognised introduced ‘social’ wasps, are our native parasitoid wasps. 

Skinny, solitary and often all black, these wasps are full of purpose – find a host to lay their eggs in.

Nicola Toki, DOC’s Threatened Species Ambassador, tells us who they choose as hosts and answers the important question – “if I find one, will it sting me?”