Holiday Sweets Event 2021 - SZE’s international students prepare speciality desserts

Széchenyi István University places great emphasis on providing students with a high quality education and as many experiences as possible. Events organised around culinary programmes are always a great success, so, similar to last spring, the young people representing different nations presented their national festive desserts and sweets at the "Holiday Sweets Event 2021" at the end of the year.

The dynamic development of Széchenyi István University's internationalisation efforts is illustrated by the fact that in the 2018-2019 academic year, applicants could choose from only seven English-taught programmes in the undergraduate, master's, doctoral and postgraduate programmes, while this academic year there are now 35 English-taught programmes. As a result, the number of international students has increased significantly, and the University now has a student body of 65 nationalities.

To mark the end of a successful 2021, in December the University launched the "Holiday Sweets Event 2021", offering international students the opportunity to cook and bake together in national teams. The event featured 23 Stipendium Hungaricum students from seven countries – Pakistan, Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Laos, Brazil and Bangladesh – who presented their festive sweets.

"Our institution had originally planned a live event in the University restaurant, as in previous years, but, due to the outbreak of the coronavirus we were unable to provide this opportunity. However, in view of the great success of our previous events and the positive feedback from students, we wanted to keep the programme, so we moved it to the virtual space, minimising physical contact," said Márta Mészáros, Head of the Mobility and Scholarship Unit of SZE’s Centre for International Programmes.

Ms Mészáros commented on the organisation of the event: "The students sent in a list of ingredients for the specialties they wanted to prepare, which were purchased by the restaurant staff, who later assembled the ingredients according to the teams. These were then labelled and the staff, together with colleagues from the Centre for International Programmes, handed the packs over to the students on the day of the event." She added that participants were asked to prepare the dessert of their choice at home or in the kitchens of the Halls of Residence by 30 December at the latest, and to share pictures and videos of the desserts they had prepared.

You can find the videos of the making process at the given link: https://ipc.sze.hu/holiday-sweets-2021