On a normal springtime Tuesday, Aurora resident Steven Levitt’s phone rang. The team behind the Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship was calling, telling him he was to fly out west to their studios on Friday.
Filming for the long-running baking show would start that Sunday.
Levitt was thrilled to be taking part in a show he had long been a fan of, but the kicker, he couldn’t tell a soul.
“I’ve never kept a secret this long,” he said, noting he only was only cleared to tell family members on the Wednesday night before Monday’s premiere on Nov. 4.
“They just knew I was sort of going away on business for a while, so that way I wasn’t lying,” he added.
Levitt is not new to television baking shows, having appeared on the Great Canadian Baking Show in 2021, and then on the Christmas special The Great Canadian Holiday Baking Show in 2022.
In the tent, he was competing against fellow Canadian amateurs. This time around, he’s baking against professionals from across the U.S.
Levitt’s baking journey only started in 2015.
After losing more than 100 pounds, he had resolved to cut out refined sugar from his diet. But after developing a craving for his favourite food, chocolate chip cookies, Levitt decided if he was going to eat a sweet, he wanted to make sure it was the best.
He resolved to learn how to bake his own. From there, he expanded to cakes and pastries, developing a love for the craft and, in the process, establishing a new goal: make it onto the Great Canadian Baking Show.
He knuckled down and made it onto the show, enjoying the “cozy” atmosphere on his way to becoming a finalist.
But the Holiday Baking Championship is another challenge all together, with the competitors finding out given far less notice of what they would be baking.
“I went through two or three failures before I got something that worked when I was practising for the Canadian show,” he said. “There’s no time for failures here.”
“The pressure is very different,” he said. “The words my wife said to me were, find the joy, you love this, just be joyful you’re doing it. And that’s how I entered it every single day. And that takes a lot of the pressure off.”
The message worked. Levitt has made it through to round three, set to air on Monday, Nov. 18.
Levitt’s daughter Marley said she was “proud” of her father, although when they watched Monday’s premier episode, she made a point of choosing one of Levitt’s competitors to cheer for, so as to “not to boost his ego too much,” she said.
Levitt said he was thankful for the support of the community, and urged anyone who aspires to appear on a baking television program themselves to "honestly just apply."
"It can be scary, but the reward can be worth it," he said. “If you do a bad bake, no one’s going to die,” he chuckled.
Episode three, dubbed “Friendsgiving” in the latest series of the Holiday Baking Championship airs tonight at 9 p.m. on Food Network Canada.
