Many love watching Food Network’s cooking and baking challenges. It’s amazing to see the skill and talent of the culinary arts come to fruition, in under an hour no less.
To be one of those contestants is a different experience entirely. For many seasoned bakers, it’s a dream come true.
It was for Courtney Norris of The Pocket Bakery in Jeffersontown this past summer. Norris has been baking since she was around 18, and over the years she worked on her craft as a hobby before creating her business.
“Six years ago I had three little kids at home,” she said. “They were 1, 3 and 6 at the time. My husband traveled a lot for work and I wanted to do something to get out of the house. I took a cookie decorating class and loved it so much, I started making decorated sugar cookies.”
It was never meant to be a business according to Norris, but friends began ordering small batches, and then on Valentine’s Day of 2019 she received an order for 500 cookies.
“I was up for two or three days, all night long,” she said. “My husband was helping me, and I didn’t have enough baker’s racks and was looking for a place to set all of these cookies. It was kind of comical in the beginning.”
She continued to work in a Louisville public relations firm, but launched The Pocket Bakery as an evening and weekend business. She does large, corporate orders and seasonal events, but she also offers a variety of unique specials and products.
“I host cookie decorating classes and offer cookie decorating kits online,” Norris said. “I have an e-cookbook on the website with seven different recipes, including the ones I made on Food Network. I also offer seasonal treats for preorder.”
Norris attends a holiday market each year with a variety of cookies. She’ll post an order form online with options like oatmeal pies or chocolate chip cookies over the holidays, and she’s currently writing a cookbook.
She moved from her home to a professional kitchen a few years back, but since then has returned home due to inflation and workforce shortages.
It was a grueling schedule, and the home bakery, along with extra offerings like community classes, were more Norris’s style.
“I like having a home bakery,” she said. “This is what made it joyful in the first place. Everything is made from scratch in small batches and it’s nice to offer something unique that you can’t just get anywhere. You can tell a difference in the taste and it’s hard to keep that up if you’re offering mass-produced product.”
When Norris is decorating sugar cookies for fun, she loves making fashion cookies.
“I have a ton of pretty dresses with details and textures,” she said. “I won a first-place ribbon at the state fair this summer for a cookie that had a Derby dress with a hat. I like to do those details, making them look realistic with folds in the fabric, and finding pictures of a real dress and recreating it.”
It’s edible art.
Many people comment that her cookies are too good to eat, but she wants you to take a bite. Many find them delicious as well, and perhaps this is the reason she was successful at the Food Network challenge.
The Food Network Christmas Cookie Challenge aired November 7, and spoiler alert – Norris won! They held a watch party to celebrate, and the community is a buzz with news of their local celebrity baker.
It was a long-awaited dream for the home baker. She started applying in 2020, thinking it would be a fun challenge and a unique experience to add to her resume.
“I applied for three years and did not get selected, so just making it on the show is a triumph,” she said. It’s a two- to three-month-long application process and you talk to producers and others on the show. I found out I was selected in mid-March.”
In April, Food Network flew Norris out to California for six days to begin taping the challenge. She had to keep it a secret that she had even been selected at the time. The theme was Christmas at the North Pole. Each episode features four new cookie bakers/decorators, and Norris’s group was tasked with a “Farm at the North Pole” challenge.
“We had two challenges,” she said. “One was celebrating Christmas in a unique way on the farm and the other was building a 3D tractor out of cookies. I felt kind of like Martha Stewart and MacGyver all in one.”
She had been advised by friends who had been on the show previously to use her best flavors and recipes for the first round, to propel her into the second round.
“At the end of the first round I won the coveted golden ornament that says Christmas Cookie Champion on it, and then for the second round I won $10,000,” Norris said.
How did she prepare? Norris said owning a bakery for six years was preparation enough.
“There’s always chaos in my kitchen, though it’s not quite the same in the Food Network studio,” she said. “It was kind of a surreal experience with the cameras, and initially I was thinking, ‘What did you get yourself into?’”
She found kindred spirits in the other three contestants. On the last night of filming, they all went to dinner together to celebrate.
“Who wouldn’t want to do it and see how it all works?” she said. “It was a bonus to win, and when you surround yourself with people who do the same work you do, they understand. This is physically and mentally challenging. It can be demanding work and despite it sometimes being difficult, it’s so worth it.”
