Riverside home baker Karen Belton is among the 12 contestants on this season of Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship, but being a professional baker wasn’t always her goal.
“I’d watch baking shows like that as a kid, but I was never like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be a pastry chef or be on TV,’” she said. “That never crossed my mind.”
In fact, selling baked goods was never even a thought at all until she had the idea to make her daughter a cake for her third birthday party.
“I wanted to get her really nice cake for her birthday, but at the time we were broke, so everywhere I looked, it was super expensive,” she said. “So then I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna make it.’”
That cake caught the attention of other parents at the local Chuck E. Cheese who asked where she bought it, and when she told them she made it, they asked if she had business cards.
“So I just started promoting myself on Craigslist,” Belton said. “I started getting some customers, and it just grew from there.”
One thing led to another and Belton eventually ended up as a pastry sous chef at the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in downtown Riverside before launching her own business, Belton Gourmet Desserts.
“It’s easier than being in a hotel working,” she said. “I create my own schedule, so it’s nice, because I get the jobs that I want.”
One of those jobs was a red velvet cake to celebrate the U.S. Marine Corps birthday during the height of the pandemic.
“Because of Covid, we weren’t able to have this large celebration, but what she did for us was she actually baked a large red velvet cake to celebrate the Marine Corps birthday, which essentially fed about 137 Marines in my company,” Daniel Mendoza said. “Everyone says it’s probably one of the best cakes they’ve ever had.”
Mendoza’s wife, Cindy Guevara, is Belton’s cousin and has also ordered desserts from her, including a dessert platter for her niece’s eighth birthday that included cake pops, pretzels, cupcakes and other sweet treats all in a unicorn theme.
Last November, Shoutout SoCal highlighted Belton’s business in a piece for the online outlet that highlights local entrepreneurs and creatives. Someone at Food Network saw the piece and the network reached out to Belton earlier this year asking if she would be interested in the opportunity.
“When I saw the email, I was like, ‘This is spam. This isn’t real,’” Belton said. “So I almost deleted it, but then I brought it to my husband, and he’s like, ‘I don’t know, maybe you should reply,’ and so I did, and it ended up being real.”
But that was just the beginning. In order to get on the show, Belton said all of the contestants go through a rigorous interview process. Once they were selected, the contestants were taken to the filming location where they remained for the duration of the competition.
“It’s really cool, and I’m glad I did it,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever do it again, but that’s, like, a bucket list kind of thing.”
As for the competition itself, intense might be too tame of a word. When Belton approached the judges with her first bake — Carla Hall, Duff Goldman and Nancy Fuller — she burst into tears.
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“It was like, the coolest moment to see them, like, talking to me and looking at me and then it was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re about to taste what I made,’” she said. “But they’re really, really cool.”
She also said, despite his penchant for asking questions at the worst possible time, host Jesse Palmer was really supportive.
“Some of the contestants said, like, ‘You know what? I just ran away from my station so he’d leave me alone, because I was busy,’” she said.
Belton said the stress of the situation was compounded by the fact that the bakers compete in a kitchen they’re unfamiliar with, under very tight deadlines that they don’t normally have, with ingredients that they might not know exactly how they want to use and in a space that’s filled with the sounds of multiple other bakers who are equally accomplished in their field.
“You’re freaking out,” she said. “You’re underestimating yourself, because you’re with these amazing people that own, like, brick and mortar bakeries, and like, we’re sharing pictures with each other and what we do, and we’re just like, ‘Holy crap, you’re amazing.’”
That mutual respect for one another has led to new friendships and a very active group chat between all of the Season 11 contestants who Belton said still text each other regularly and continue to support one another whether that’s texting while the show airs or sharing their latest bakes.
“We all became really close,” she said. “We’re all rooting for each other.”
Also rooting for Belton are friends like Kristi Chorich, who has been friends with Belton for more than a decade after first meeting at the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa.
“I feel like a proud mom. I don’t know any other way to explain it,” Chorich said. “I was so proud watching her, and it made me tear up, to be completely honest, so I’m just very happy and very proud because she deserves it so much.”
Her biggest supporter through all of this though has been her husband of 17 years, Charles Belton, who she credits for always pushing her to get out of her comfort zone and try new things.
“I would call him and be like, ‘I’m freaking out,’” she said. “And he would just tell me to just have fun, you know? Like, just don’t think of it as a competition, don’t think of it as anything other than you’re enjoying your time there.”
For his part, Charles said getting to see her excel on a national stage has been exciting for the whole family, but it’s nothing they didn’t already know she was capable of doing.
“She always plays down her skills, and she’s so talented,” he said. “I can see it, and other people do too, so it’s nice that she’s being recognized.”
Charles also said it was inspiring for their kids to be able to see her excel at something that she worked hard to teach herself how to do without formal culinary training.
“Everything she touches, she excels in,” he said. “She’s got a lot more talent than a lot of people know.”
The Season 11 winner will receive $25,000, a feature in Food Network Magazine and the title of Holiday Baking Champion. New episodes of the Holiday Baking Championship air Monday nights at 8 p.m. on Food Network.
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