San Jose baker to compete on Food Network’s Christmas Cookie Challenge

Just as many relationships start nowadays, the first contact San Jose baker Elizabeth Medina had with the Food Network was when their reps slid into her DMs. (That’s reaching out via direct message on social media for any non-Instagrammers out there.)

The message? Would Medina, who runs her own cookie-decorating business, Sugar Queen Baking, be interested in competing on the network’s “Christmas Cookie Challenge“? Now in its seventh season, the Food Network show pits four participants against each other each episode to complete cookie-related baking challenges and impress judges Ree Drummond and Eddie Jackson.

Medina will be up to bat — or rather, up to (cookie bat)ter — Dec. 7.

Medina was hesitant initially. Having seen the show, she knew that one of the challenges involves building a three-dimensional cookie structure, but she’d never even made a gingerbread house. Most of her customers, after all, prefer her art — royal icing on vanilla sugar cookies — in 2D form.

But she went for it, and as she went through the audition process, completing challenges and practicing at home, she gained confidence.

“it was really fun to challenge myself to try to do the structured cookies,” she says. She experimented with different edible glues to see what would dry quickly while helping the structure hold its shape.

Medina, who works at Stanford by day and runs her cookie-decorating business at night and on weekends, has been baking since she was four years old, but didn’t start baking professionally until about eight years ago, when she made custom cookies for a friend’s engagement party.

“From there, it grew and grew,” she says. “I started doing it more and got better and better.”

While she can’t talk about how the challenge went — no spoilers here, you’ll have to watch to find out — she did say that the time allotted for each challenge seemed to fly by.

You can catch Medina’s baking performance on the Food Network and HBO Max on Dec. 7, where she’ll compete against three other bakers from the U.S. and Canada in an episode titled “Christmas on the Road.”

Like other episodes, this one has two challenges. In the first, bakers are asked to make a two-sided Christmas postcard cookie, with the lowest scoring competitor facing elimination. For the second challenge, the remaining bakers compete to see who can make the coolest three-dimensional Christmas camper van from outdoorsy ingredients like granola bars, fruit leather, almond butter and oatmeal. The winner gets $10,000 and a golden ornament prize.

If you’d like to bake along — or just bake great looking cookies — make sure your royal icing has the right consistency, neither too lumpy or runny, Medina says. “That’s key,” she says. From there, lots of practice and a steady hand go a long way.

Details: Episode 6, “Christmas on the Road,” of “The Christmas Cookie Challenge” premieres at 9 p.m. PST on Thursday, Dec. 7 on Food Network and HBO Max. Want to sample Medina’s cookies for yourself? Medina decorates cookies for customers around the Bay Area and offers porch pickups from her home in San Jose. Go to sugarqueenbakery.net for more information.