Photo courtesy Haley Stewart
When Haley Stewart’s pumpkin coffee cake donuts won her first place in Cincinnati Magazine’s Great Cincinnati Bake-Off last October, she couldn’t have known it would be the impetus for national baking acclaim.
Shortly after her win, Stewart—a pastry and catering chef for Moerlein Lager House—found an email in her inbox from a representative of “The Greatest Baker,” a national baking contest hosted by the revered “Cake Boss,” Buddy Valastro. The recruiter, who had discovered Stewart through her Bake-Off win, encouraged her to consider taking part in the competition.
“I had to submit a ton of pictures of wedding cakes I’ve done over the years and different things,” she says. “It was all very random, but I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’”
By the end of October, Stewart was accepted as one of about 20,000 people across the country involved in “The Greatest Baker.” The stakes? A $20,000 cash prize for the top baker as well as a feature spread in Bake From Scratch magazine and a personal baking lesson in New York City with the Cake Boss himself.
Participants in the competition are solely reliant on votes and donations from their peers to progress. All bakers are sorted into groups and put through up to eight rounds of public voting over the course of nine weeks. Each day, voters are allowed one free vote for any one of the thousands of bakers. To get more votes each day, they must donate money, which benefits the B+ Foundation for pediatric cancer research. The first round of voting narrows the groups down to the top 20 bakers. In the first six weeks, the groups continue to narrow down until only one baker remains.
With the support of her friends and family, Stewart quickly found herself leading the group. “The first couple of rounds, it was really just people doing the free votes, and I thought, ‘Oh wow, this is kind of crazy, I’m in first place in my group,’” says Stewart.
That kind of support from her family isn’t unfamiliar to Stewart—it’s what inspired her passion for baking in the first place. Stewart grew up helping her mother and siblings cook in the kitchen. “My mom’s one rule was that as long as you clean up after yourself, you can do whatever you want in the kitchen,” she says.
While her baking and cooking hobby started early, she never expected it could come to be a career. After graduating high school, the Cincinnati native left home to attend St. Louis University on a D1 athletic scholarship for field hockey. She spent two years there, where she studied sports broadcasting, before she noticed that being away from home was starting to take a toll on her health.
“I got really sick, physically sick but also really homesick,” she says. “My whole family was in Cincinnati and it was my first time I was away from my family like that. Being a D1 athlete is a lot, especially when men’s football and basketball get a lot of accolades, but when you play a sport that’s not so in the limelight, it’s really hard.”
The following summer, Stewart made her way back home to reevaluate her path in life. She reconsidered leaving for college, and at the suggestion of her parents, decided to enroll in the Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State. “I had no other thoughts about what I wanted to do and thought that maybe learning how to cook could help my health at the same time,” she says. “It was always something I loved to do.”
Showing the same enthusiasm for Stewart’s success in the competition as they did when she made the transition to culinary, her friends and family brought her to the group finals, where she was voted the winner of her group and permitted to the quarterfinals. She submitted baked goods to be judged in a “Critic’s Choice,” and naturally, she made donuts (a chai latte donut).
“Over the past two months, I’ve baked more than I probably have ever baked in my life,” she says. “I would send baked goods with my husband every single day to work, I was giving stuff to my friends and family to take to their families for the holidays to get people to vote, I was promoting it on my social media every single day.”
Even the Moerlein Lager House got in on the buzz. Moerlein encouraged its customers to get out and vote for its pastry chef, posting about Stewart’s accolades on social media—and it worked.
“I was floored to see the amount of people that voted for me that don’t even know me,” she says. “Voters could write messages, and people were so excited to see somebody from Cincinnati in the competition. I expected it from my family and friends, but every time I would refresh the website, it would be more people whose names I’ve never seen in my life.”
Cincinnati’s support for Stewart brought her all the way to the semifinals, where she placed fifth in the entire competition. “I couldn’t believe that out of 20,000 people, I got down to fifth place,” she says. “It was sad [to not advance], naturally, but we donated thousands of dollars to charity, which is the coolest part. And it was all through word of mouth. It was really awesome.”
The competition is now over, but experiencing such significant support from her hometown has ignited a fire under Stewart. “With all of the generosity that I felt from people, I have felt really compelled to do something charitable and give back,” she says.
Although she hasn’t quite figured out what that will be yet, Stewart is excited about the future and to continue being a force on Cincinnati’s baking scene.
In the meantime, those that want to try out Stewart’s baked goods for themselves can do so at the Moerlein Lager House, where all the desserts on the menu are her recipes, as well as at the Roebling Event Center. Further, Stewart is taking charge of Moerlein’s annual Fire & Ice dinners, happening every weekend from January 24 to February 8. The themed, three-course meals include ice bars and sculptures, fire performers, igloos, and cocktails served by local mixologist Molly Wellman.
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