One Central Alberta baker and cake aficionado is making her name in the cake industry following her triumphant return to the world of reality TV cooking shows.

Tracy Irwin, owner of Sugar By Tracy in Penhold, recently came in second place on The Food Networks show Winner Cakes All at the start of the year.

She was then invited back to participate in another cooking show known as The Big Bake Holiday, where she, along with her team Sweet Badlands, were able to take the top spot.

Filming for Irwin's episode took place back in the summer, but the episode didn't air until Monday, November 25th, which means Irwin had to keep her victory a secret, the best she could anyway.

“So it was a few months that I had to keep my mouth shut on winning. We came back and we weren’t allowed to say anything, but I did, because it was really hard to keep my mouth shut (laughs). So I definitely told a few people because like, that was really exciting and that’s way too big of a secret for me to try and keep.”

Irwin says she had to dig deep into her wealth of cake knowledge and creativity in order to impress the judges this time around.

“This one we had to make a big, elaborate 5-foot tall cake, but it needed to like, have special effects and have some dynamic elements to it. They wanted to see things spinning, and moving, and water, and flames, and things like that. So we took their flame idea and I don’t think they were expecting us to show up with what we did. It was really cool.”

The concept for the cake Irwin baked on the The Big Bake Holiday. Photos courtesy of Tracy Irwin.

After taking the top spot on The Big Bake Holiday, Irwin says her next goal is to win The Food Networks Halloween Wars, which she says is one of the biggest cooking contests on their network.

From there, she plans on one day being the top cake designer in the world.