St. Charles hobbyist baker battles pastry professionals on Food Network’s ‘Halloween Baking Championship’
Call it a twice-in-a-lifetime experience.
St. Charles hobbyist baker Elizabeth Suwanski had what she told the Daily Herald in 2023 was a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” when she appeared on Food Network’s “Halloween Cookie Challenge.”
After winning $10,000 on that show, she’ll return to the network Monday, when “Halloween Baking Championship” makes its season 12 premiere at 8 p.m. locally.
With the cookie challenge program no longer on the network, Suwanski is broadening her competition horizons with a show that requires different baking abilities.
“Actually, I love this show, and it’s something that I watch every year,” she said. “I always thought ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I could be on it,’ but I would obviously need to expand my skill set quite a bit.”
Before she even considered applying, she started baking and decorating cakes while teaching herself pastry and molecular gastronomy.
“I had to learn all the things I’ve seen other contestants do on the show just so I would have any chance of being in the ring with these people,” she said.
Monday’s premiere, titled “The Museum of Unnatural History,” features 10 bakers tasked with first making “nutty desserts expressing their best spooky Halloween memories.”
The show is hosted by John Henson, with judges Stephanie Boswell, Aarti Sequeira and Zac Young picking the first challenge winner to receive $1,000. The top three bakers in the first challenge are safe from elimination, while the rest must “make hideous mask desserts inspired by the disfigured mask collection in the Hall of Humanity.”
The least successful baker is eliminated at the end of each episode. The last person standing at the end of the season wins the title of Halloween Baking Champion and $25,000.
Suwanski said having appeared on a show before did offer a little advantage, which she needed because of the competition she faced.
“The people that I was on the show with, every single one of them had gone to pastry school, and for the most part, they all did it for a living in a professional kitchen, so they know their recipes very, very well,” she said. “For them, it’s muscle memory, whereas I’m still trying to think like, ‘oh, like is that done, or when do I take that out?’ because I don’t do it as frequently.”
Not only does the self-taught Suwanski, who you can find on Instagram as the_pumpkinmooncookies, not bake for a living, she never sells anything she bakes.
“It is something I do for a hobby because I get to do exactly what I want,” she said. “It becomes a process that is joyful to me because it’s about me creating something for me, and then I get to give it to people to eat.”
While Suwanski was excited to show she could do more than cookies, she doesn’t mind being pigeonholed by the fact that both shows were Halloween-themed.
“I love Halloween. I've always loved Halloween,” she said. “You wouldn’t think it to look at me because I just look very ‘Midwestern mom,’ but I have always just been super spooky deep down, and Halloween’s always been my favorite holiday. I’ve always wanted to just make things that are a little creepy.”
Halloween isn’t the only holiday where things get dark.
“A lot of my Christmas cookies are Krampus-related, Santa’s creepy counterpart,” she said. “Even for Easter I have a scary bunny cookie.”
Regardless of the season, the reason she enjoys baking cookies is the reaction her creations elicit.
“My favorite thing is when people look at that and say, ‘That's a cookie?,’” she said. “I really love making interactive cookies so you can play with the food before you eat it.”
Though she was “bummed” that the network isn’t producing a Halloween cookie show, she’s hopeful it will bring it or something similar back.
“Maybe it will be a thrice-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said.
rwest@dailyherald.com