Bobby Deen returns with 2nd season of Holiday Baking Championship

Anyone who has ever wondered what happens to the confections created on Food Network’s “Holiday Baking Championship” should take comfort in the knowledge that they don’t go to waste.

“There’s a large crew involved with these shows,” explains host Bobby Deen, an Albany native, with a laugh, “and inevitably food ends up being devoured by the crew. It certainly doesn’t go to waste. So next to the craft services table at the lot there, there is after each preheat or elimination heat, a table full of baked desserts and it always disappears. There’s something about sweets that people really love.”

In the hourlong series, which returns at 9 p.m. Sunday for its second season with eight episodes, 10 talented bakers create their most delicious desserts, which are then evaluated for taste, techique, presentation and creativity by the judging panel of Duff Goldman (“Ace of Cakes”), Nancy Fuller (“Farmhouse Rules”) and Lorraine Pascal (“Lorraine’s Fast, Fresh and Easy Foods”). The winner takes home a grand prize of $50,000.

As is the case with many competition series, there are the challenges. In the season premiere, the bakers are tasked to “go nuts” for the holiday.

“We gave them a selection of different nuts that they had to use for the preheat,” Deen explains. “And what’s fun is we oftentimes … will leave it up to the contestants to decide for their fellow bakers what items they may have to use in cooking or how much time they may have to cook. … Sometimes we may give them an item which would be advantageous for them to use. Or sometimes we may take away a particular item from the rest of their fellow bakers. … Our challenges are more fair and fun.”

Q&A

What book are you currently reading?

“I’m a huge fan of music and I’m a musician and I’m a guitar collector and a drummer, and I just finished a book called ‘Deal’ by Billy Kreutzmann, who is one of the two drummers from the Grateful Dead. It’s not the only type of book that I read but I literally just turned the last page on it.”

What did you have for dinner last night?

““I made a really beautiful vegetable medley – we call it succotash down here. So it would be onions and red, yellow and green peppers, kernels of corn, okra, tomatoes and fresh lima beans. I just was visiting my father down in Southwest Georgia and I went to a beautiful farm down there with him and there were some folks there shelling fresh lima beans. So for the last couple of days, I’ve made a great succotash at home.”

What is your next project?

“I will shoot a series called ‘Junk Food Flip’ with a young lady named Nikki Dinki. We shot six episodes of ‘Junk Food Flip’ in January of this year as a – it wasn’t exactly a pilot. It was sort of a trial. We shot six to go to air and it was picked up and bought and I’m happily going to shoot ‘Junk Food Flip’ again.”

When was the last vacation you took, where and why?

“I went to Bogota, Colombia, in June of this year with my wife. My wife is from Venezuela and … my wife’s brother and his wife and their two daughters live in Bogota, Colombia, so we went down there for a week and just had an amazing time.”