Dru Tevis is the winner of the Holiday Baking Championship in season 9. The champion is the Pastry Chef of SoDel Concepts.
The Holiday Baking Championship is an American baking competition series. It is aired by the Food Network channel and produced by Triage Entertainment. It starts to air from November to December wrapping up Thanksgiving and Christmas. The first season premiered on November 9, 2014. Since then, the show has become a yearly competition.
Thanks to the success of the show, several spin-off shows have been made based on the show. This includes the Kids Baking Championship, Spring Baking Championship, Halloween Baking Championship and Wedding Cake Championship.
Since the show started in 2014, the show has become a needed show for the holiday season on Food Network. Fans of the show just cannot wait to see the surprises and the excitement that will be cooked up during the championship.
The show is basically about searching to find the best holiday baker from the number of bakers that enter the Holiday Kitchen. Here the participants show off their exquisite baking skills and their family tradition that they continue to follow. The bakers must prove their abilities in front of the tough judges to survive each week of the challenge held in the championship.
Hosted by Jesse Palmer, and judged by Duff Goldman, Nancy Fuller and Carla Hall, the show wants to celebrate this holiday in the sweetest way possible.
And Dru Tevis has won season 9 in the 2022 baking championship by beating his opponent.
Dru Tevis Is The Winner of Holiday Baking Championship 2022
Dru Tevis is the winner of the Holiday Baking Championship of season 9 in 2022. Dru has also taken his $25,000 prize.
During the finale of season 9 of the Holiday Baking Championship, the atmosphere was really tense for all the contestants. The season had actually five remaining contestants, more than previous seasons for the final episode.
The final five contestants remaining in the championship for the prize of Holiday Baking Championship included Aaron Davis, the cake decorator, Bill Makin, the home baker, Aishia Martinez, the pastry chef, Dru Tevis, the pastry chef and Jessica Wang, the pastry food stylist.
One contestant was to be eliminated during the first hour of the finale episode and the four final contestants were to compete in the second hour for the final reward.
The eliminated contestant was Bill Makin, the home baker in the first hour, which left the remaining contestant to compete for the final reward of the competition.
The four competitors were given the task to bake a cake to highlight some of the popular holiday vacation spots and present the result to the judges for them to select the best cake and award the best cake maker with $25,000 and the championship title.
The baked result was really close call with Dru and Aishia, the pastry chefs having the best cake among the four final contestants. Finally, the judges decided and revealed that Dru Tevis is to be crowned as the winner of season 9 of the Holiday Baking Championship title and has taken the $25,000 prize.
Dru Tevis Is A Corporate Chef At SoDel Concepts Since 2018
Dru Tevis has been working as a corporate pastry chef at SoDel Concepts since 2018. Tevis is the only pastry chef over here.
Way before Dru Tevis started his journey as the corporate pastry chef at SoDel Concepts, he had joined French Culinary Institute currently known as The International Culinary Center. There is completed his Grand Diploma in Professional Pastry Arts. He was so good with the classes, he was granted as the class valedictorian.
Later Tevis got the opportunity to work under two prestigious pastry chefs Kierin Baldwin of the Dutch and Christina Tosi, chef/owner of Momofuku Milk Bar making himself better in pastry art in New York City.
Thereafter, he moved to Rehoboth in 2012 and had the opportunity to work with many great chefs in the area. After working for 6 years, he took a year off to focus on travel, pastry and restarting his culinary education. He took seminars and classes from many prestigious organization and worked for various kitchens all over the U.S.
The chef got the opportunity to take classes and seminars from organizations such as The French Pastry School, Chicago; Leith’s School of Food & Wine, London, England; Good Taste of Tuscany, Signa, Italy; Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, France; Chocolate Academy, Chicago.
At the near end of 2018, he started to work as a Corporate Pastry Chef for SoDel Concepts.
Dru Tevis Started Baking At A Young Age
Dru Tevis had started baking at a young age. Tevis never knew he loved baking very much.
Dru was born and raised in Westminster, MD. When he was big enough, he used to spend his summer time in Rehoboth while growing up. There he used a lot of baking and was also interested in baking. But he never got the opportunity.
The chef later started working in the restaurant at a local Irish Pub in Westminster. Though not close to baking he learned to be near the kitchen over there. After graduating from New York University with a B.S., he spent a year working as a manager and server in a restaurant in Rehoboth.
There he offered to make desserts for the restaurant, but he fell in love with baking. His desserts were also well accepted and he even got requests from the restaurant to make desserts to be served.
He was very close off to studying Graduate Film School at American University but after realizing his true calling he went for baking pastries. Then the rest is history.
Holiday Baking Championship Cast in Season 9
The Holiday Baking Championship had 12 contestants for season 9. Along with them were a host and 3 judges.
The host of the show was Jesse Palmer. He began his journey in the show in season 4 where he replaced Bobby Deen who hosted the beginning three seasons. Jesse has also hosted shows such as The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise before.
The judges for the show were celebrity chefs Duff Goldman, Nancy Fuller and Carla Hall. These judges have been in this field for a long time and they will be determining the winner for the championship. Duff and Nancy had been judges for the championship since the beginning of the show. Carla only came from season 7 replacing Lorraine Pascale due to Pascale not being able to come from London during the Pandemic.
According to the Food Network channel, the competitor for the competition were Aaron Davis, a cake decorator from Arizona; Christine Herelle-Lewis, a French pastry chef from New York; Antoine Hopkins, a pastry chef from Philadelphia.
Likewise, RaChelle Hubsmith, Bill Makin and Sumera Syed, all home bakers from Salt Lake City, Brooklyn and Dallas were present for the grand prize.
Joining with them would be Aishia Marinez from New Jersey; Harsal Naik from Pennsylvania; Zakiya Newton from Florida; Dru Tevis from Delaware; Kristen Weidlein from New York and Jessica Wang from Los Angeles are all professional pastry chefs who run different businesses of their own.
Jessica Wang is the Holiday Baking Competition’s youngest competitor.