Mind-blowing volcano cake gives tween baker the crown
San Antonio tween baker Lila Smethurst held onto her recipe for the best chocolate cake she’s ever made throughout her run on the “Kids Baking Championship,” determined to save it for the finale.
It was a smart gambit. Her rich chocolate cake, with chocolate hazelnut pastry cream and salted caramel buttercream, won the day in the season finale of the Food Network series. It aired Monday and is streaming on Max.
The Tex Hill Middle School seventh-grader burst into tears when judges Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman announced she had taken the title. In addition to bragging rights, Lila won $25,000 and will be featured in an article in the network’s magazine.
“I’m taking so much from this,” she said. “I can do whatever I put my mind to, even if it’s crazy.”
The last challenge of the season called on Lila and fellow finalists Oscar Stowell and Tasi Savage to
make volcano cakes that had to smoke. Each cake was to be from a different environment, which needed to be reflected in the design and the flavors. Lila was tasked with making a polar volcano; Oscar made a forest volcano; and Tasi made a tropical volcano.
Lila’s cake featured white-capped waves and little penguins frolicking at the base, as well as orange and yellow sugar flames erupting from the top.
As the clock wound down on the five-hour challenge, she ran into a nerve-wracking problem when she couldn’t get the
cylinder that was to hold the dry ice for the smoke to plunge all the way into the cake. She took a moment, caught her breath, then found a shallower cup that fit.
Bertinelli and Goldman said her cake was the besttasting of the final three. Their sole issue was with the look, because it resembled an upside-down bucket more than a volcano. Even so, they said, it was a pretty cake.
The newly minted champ had a rocky start on the show. In a chat with Bertinelli in the finale, she admitted she had worried that she’d be the first baker sent home after she ran into problems with the red velvet cake she made for the first challenge.
She nearly went home one other time in the first few weeks, but then she rallied. She ultimately won four of the season’s 10 challenges.
The 12-year-old said she planned to use some of the prize money to take her family to Hawaii. And she intended to use some for cat toys. Her parents had promised her and her sister that they could get cats if she won.
And one of the final images of the season is a photo of a grinning Lila cradling one kitty in her arms while another sits on her head.*