HOUSTON – We love shinning a spotlight on local talent that’s making it big on the national stage! This is exactly what three Houston-area cake artists were able to do on Netflix’s Sugar Rush; a competition where they showed their baking and decorating skills.
The contestants are: Tom and Cathy Johnston, from Suzybeez Bakery, and Iliana Rincon with SophistiCake.
They shared with Houston Life details about their experience on the show hosted by Hunter March.
The show is a competition that challenges four teams of two pastry chefs to create treats that look beautiful and taste amazing -- all against the clock.
Caty and Tom Johnston won the episode titled “The Perfect Illusion” and took home $11,500 as prize.
“It was crazy. For the first round we had to do an illusion cake. Then the second round, we had to do a magic theme that included a magic ingredient and an action for the judges. And then the third round we had to do a levitating cake,” recounts Johnston.
“The time went really fast. We work together every day, so it was easy to delegate the task of who was going to do what, and then we set little timers for ourselves to make sure we didn’t get off-track,” she said.
The couple met in culinary school in 2010 and have their bakery Suzybeez in Cypress, where he’s the baker and she’s the pastry chef.
They impressed judges with a three-foot cake that on the side had a magician’s top hat levitating over the cake.
Rincon, owner of SophistiCake in Sugar Land, also appeared on the show in the episode titled “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner” where she teamed up with friend Joyce Marcellus who lives in California.
“The producers sent me an email asking if I wanted to apply on the show, to try out for the show. I didn’t want to do it. My daughter and my husband convinced me, and then I was like ‘OK, I’ll do it’. So, I went through the process. I few months later, they contacted me, very last minute, they said ‘You made it. You fly out in a couple of weeks,’” explained Rincon about how she made it into the competition where her team was the runner-up.
Rincon has been baking for about 8 years and considers herself a cake artist, not a baker because she prefers to decorate.
To see their complete interview, watch the video above.
If you haven’t seen Sugar Rush, watch the trailer in the video below.