Utahn RaChelle Hubsmith has been on a lot of TV food competition shows, but she never had to fly with a cake by her side before “Bake It ’Til You Make It” on the Food Network.
“I’ve done the in-studio filming,” she said, “and that’s kind of a whole different experience because you’re using equipment that’s not yours. It’s not your kitchen. There’s only certain ingredients available.”
But on “Bake It,” which premieres Monday at 10 p.m. on the Food Network, “I made it in my home. And then I had to travel with it. So I had that added stress.”
The seven contestants, all amateur bakers, hit the road for baking competitions across America. And flying with cakes garnered her some funny looks from her fellow airline passengers. “I had a plane ticket for my cake. It sat on the seat right next to me,” Hubsmith said.
And things got even crazier when she was told one of her cakes would have to go through the airport x-ray machine. “I thought, ‘It’s not going to fit. Please don’t,” she said. “And it did tip over, because it didn’t quite fit, and I almost crawled up on the conveyor belt to get my cake. And security was, like, ‘Ma’am! Ma’am!’
“So there are definitely some stressful moments that they didn’t catch on camera because we didn’t have a camera crew with us at the airport.”
She contacted TSA before her flights about the cakes. “I was so worried,” Hubsmith said. “The cakes have hardware inside of them to help them stay upright. So I have thread rods in there and bolts and nuts, and then I cover them with foil tape. So I was worried that when they go to scan it, they’re going to pick up metal and then they’re, like, ‘OK, what’s this lady hiding?’ But luckily, they were usually really good to work with me. They’d look in the box, they’d see the cake, and they were just, like, ‘I think she’s OK to go through.’ But it was really unnerving every time I went through security.”
(Food Network) Rachelle Hubsmith talks with Marilyn Bawol on "Bake It 'Til You Make It."
This was out of the ordinary for a woman who has competed in more than 30 food competitions over the past decade, both televised and untelevised. Just weeks ago, she was on the Food Network’s “Holiday Baking Championship,” where she ... gulp ... finished 12th out of 12. She was hoping to do better on “Bake It ’Til You Make It,” which taped earlier this year.
“I’ve done quite a few TV shows and I love it,” Hubsmith said. “I come alive. It’s just where I want to be.”
She has the baking skills and the sort of personality that pops off the screen, which explains why the 45-year-old wife and mother is in demand for TV cooking competitions. Although this is a path she never expected to take — she was not really into cooking or baking when she was growing up.
“You know how in Harry Potter, they say that the wand chooses the wizard? That’s how I feel about with this baking career of mine,” Hubsmith said. “I wasn’t really looking for it. It just keeps funneling into my life more and more. So it’s like it’s chosen me.”
And she’s having “so much fun. It literally just feels like the right thing for me in the moment. I really love doing TV, which I never thought that would be my my path because I was a shy little kid.”
It began innocently enough: She just started baking cakes for her kids, and posting pictures of the cakes on social media. Other people started contacting her to bake cakes for them, and then she started getting contacted to audition for TV baking competitions.
Weirdly enough, she was first contacted to audition for a food competition show because of her love for the dieting show “The Biggest Loser.” She “dragged” her family to a “Biggest Loser” event in Logan and was “fangirling over everybody.” She friended some of the contestants on Facebook, and one of them contacted her and suggested she audition for a new baking show one of the “Biggest Loser” producers was launching. She didn’t get on that show, but it did get her noticed and resulted in other opportunities.
“Bake It ‘Til You Make It,” she said, is “so different from any of the other Food Network shows that they do because it’s their first show that’s more of a reality-show style. A lot of times you watch Food Network and you learn how to make recipes or you watch someone compete, but you don’t really know that much about the people. This is totally different because it combines two of my favorite things — baking competitions and reality TV.”
A film crew came to her house in North Logan to film her baking, followed her to her job as a Cache County assessor, into Logan Canyon and to the county fair. “I loved making this show. It really was just such a highlight of my life,” she said.
She’s not just a contestant on these shows, she’s a big fan. “Anything that has cooking or baking, I’m watching it,” Hubsmith said. “I tell my husband that I’m doing my homework. And so I’ll be shushing him.”
Her baking exploits and TV appearances catch the attention of friends and acquaintances, but not so much her own kids, ages 26, 23 and 13. “It‘s just normal, everyday to them,” Hubsmith said. “If I’m not baking, it’s probably a weird, weird day for them.”
And, she said, her kids are “finicky, picky eaters that only like about five things on the planet anyways. And I’m always giving them crazy recipes to eat. Sometimes, they’re, like, ‘Mom, I just want a basic chocolate chip cookie.’”
But for her, the most fun is trying something new and working out her own recipes. “My biggest nightmare is when I’ve made something and people ask me to make it again,” Hubsmith said. “I’m, like, ‘Oh, come on!’ I want to try something different.”
Which is one of the reasons she’s always ready to try a new TV show, even though she finds watching herself “cringey. ... You’re thinking, ‘Oh — did I say that? Does that even make sense? It’s fun, but it’s also just kind of hard to watch yourself.
“I know that I make a lot of weird faces and stuff.”
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