“The Loser” sits on a shelf inside a display case at Cutesy Cupcakes in Scotts Valley. This unusual cupcake — a sweet potato cake with dried prunes, frosted with a banana buttercream frosting — is a perfectly-cooked replica of the undercooked cupcake that cost owners Lacey Thompson and Jeanette Fitzgearl a chance at Cupcake Wars glory. The owners took their elimination from the Food Network show in a light-hearted manner and nicknamed the cake ‘The Loser’ because it cost them a chance to move to the second round of the competition.
“The judges liked the taste of it, but they were too moist,” Fitzgearl said Monday.
Thompson and Fitzgearl, a daughter-mother team, was one of four teams to compete on the season premiere of Food Network’s hit television show Cupcake Wars that aired Saturday, Sept. 7.
The show pits four teams of cupcake makers against each other for a $10,000 prize and a chance to bake 1,000 cupcakes for a gala or event.
Fitzgearl and Thompson, the mother and daughter duo who opened Cutesy Cupcakes in December, were thrilled to bake for the show’s surprise guest judge, actress Jessica Alba, along with the show’s mainstay judges Candace Nelson and Florian Bellanger.
The four teams were tasked with baking all-natural cupcakes that best represented Alba’s company The Honest Company’s all-natural philosophy.
“To have (Alba) try our cupcake was really weird,” Fitzgearl said. “It was surreal.”
Cutesy Cupcakes were the first team to be eliminated when their cupcake wound up being under-baked. Fitzgearl said the convection oven they use in their shop is calibrated differently than the oven they used on the Food Network set in Manhattan Beach. She said they typically bake their cakes at 275 degrees, but 300 degrees was not even hot enough while baking the cupcake on the show, they said.
“It was too low,” Thompson said. “We tried to crank it up at the end, but we didn’t have enough time.”
The other contestants were able to bake their cakes fully to the judges satisfaction.
Thompson took the elimination in stride.
“It was disappointing and also a relief because it was such a high stress situation,” she said.
After having watched the show for years, the duo also learned something.
“We thought it was more staged than it really was,” Thompson said.
Fitzgearl agreed.
“We thought it was fake, but it turned out that it was (a real competition),” she said.
The pair was honored to be part of the show, and said they hope to return at some point to redeem themselves.
“We just wish we could have baked them a really good one and how them what our potential really is,” Fitzgearl said.
“The Loser” will only be baked at Cutesy Cupcakes for about a week they said. The shop is located at 245-V Mount Hermon Road in the Scotts Village shopping center.
Cutesy Cupcakes, with the help of local film student Nick Sherrell, created an audition tape this spring. They were accepted to the show within eight days of submitting their tape. The show was filmed in mid-June, but the contestants were required to keep their participation a secret until the week before the show aired.
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