It was a surreal feeling for Chrissy Cummings when she walked on the set of a Food Network Canada television show.
The Red Deer woman was part of a three-person team on The Big Bake: Holiday episode At Home with Santa, which airs Monday evening.
“It was awesome. It was surreal. Until you actually go into the studio and it was really there, it didn’t seem like it was really going to happen,” Cummings said Monday afternoon, just a few hours before her episode aired.
The Big Bake: Holiday is described as a larger-than-life baking competition series with themed episodes. In each episode, three professional baking teams have five hours to design, bake and decorate a grand-scale cake creation based on a particular theme.
The team with the most ambitious, eye-popping and delicious cake will go home with a $10,000 prize.
The show’s judges – Eddie Jackson, Ron Ben-Israel and Harry Eastwood – were “so positive” and helped made it a great experience, Cummings said, adding she loves to watch shows on the Food Network.
Janet Letendre, Cummings’ cousin, reached out to her through social media and asked the Red Deerian to be on the team. The third member of the team is Letendre’s friend Karen.
“We all didn’t meet officially for the first time until we were on set. We flew out and that was when we first officially met each other and got to bake with each other. It was really cool,” she said.
Cummings became passionate about baking roughly five years ago, she said.
“I was an at-home mom for 15 years and that kind of occupied me and my time. Between (raising) the kids and stuff, (baking) was a stress relief. I’ve just been doing it ever since,” she said.
“Baking is a total creative outlet – you can do everything and anything. I’ve come such a long way since even five years ago with designing and being able to make different sized cakes.”
Cummings owns a small baking company called Crissy’s Crumbles. She has been making cakes and other baked goods in her kitchen, and is hoping to expand her clientele base over the next year.
Food Network Canada shows can be seen on various streaming platforms: StackTV, the Global TV app and Discovery+.
For more information on the show, visit www.foodnetwork.ca/shows/the-big-bake/holiday.
sean.mcintosh@reddeeradvocate.com
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