Sweet News
Plano baker is youngest ever to compete on Food Network's Cupcake Wars
UPDATE: The producers have rescheduled this episode of Cupcake Wars to run in the fall.
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Another Dallas-Fort worth resident is set to represent on reality TV — and this one is making history. Plano resident and part-time baker Christina O’Donoghue takes her sweet skills to Food Network’s Cupcake Wars, where she’ll be the youngest competitor ever on the show.
Upon receiving her culinary degree at Le Cordon Bleu Austin, 21-year-old Donoghue began working at the Gaylord Texan. “When my dad got sick, I started making cupcakes as a small means of income,” O’Donoghue says. “There’s a lot of space to be creative with cupcakes.”
O’Donoghue got a job at Velvet Bake Shop in Plano, her first professional pastry gig. She worked there for about eight months before she decided to try out for Cupcake Wars.
“I knew I wanted to take my mom; I figured we might have a good chance if there were two Asians on the show,” she jokes. (You can see them both in the audition above.)
Upon acceptance, O’Donoghue and her mom flew out to Los Angeles for the filming. “It wasn’t so fun at first; you go there and you just work really hard,” she says. “But overall it was very stressful and very fun.”
O’Donoghue, who is currently a server at Whiskey Cake and hopes to open her own shop one day, credits her “cute mom” and “lucky spatula” for surviving the toughest parts of the competition.
“Winning [Cupcake Wars] would help me get my name out there,” she says. “And it would be great to [50 years from now] tell my grandbabies that their grandma was pretty cool back in the day.”
Tune in to Food Network June 16, 7 pm, to watch O’Donoghue in action.
Taylor Sheridan's first book will be released in June 2026.Photo courtesy of Amazon.com