The Truth About Team Sugar Snowflake From Holiday Wars: Season 3
"This was the hardest thing I have ever done," Orly Yadao shared with The Garden Island in 2018. He had just won that year's edition of Halloween Wars. "We met, prepped and taped the following day. It was like that for two full weeks. We went out at 6 a.m. and didn't get back until past 11 p.m."
This could equally apply to the rigors he has undergone for this year's Holiday Wars as a member of Team Sugar Snowflake. The three hadn't met before. Still, they had a competition to take on together.
Yadao was the member to come from the most schooled baking background. As For Kaua'i details, years before he finally opened Orly's Patisserie, he began at the Westin on Kaua'i as a dishboy in 1989. Before long, however, he saw a German baking exhibition at the community college where he was studying. He caught the bug of sugary artistry, pursued it to Las Vegas where he worked as an assistant pastry chef, and returned to his home with the arts of baking.
Debbie Church's trajectory came from a different course. "I lost my job at [the North Virginian] Allied Health School in April 2012," she told iMatter Magazine, "and after numerous job interviews I never got a job." However during this time, a friend asked her to make cupcakes for their colleagues. "Everybody loved it," Church recalled, "so I knew I was onto something." That something became Delicate Creations, a custom cake company.
Completing their team and their competition
The trio was rounded out by Jacqueline "Jackie" Kock. As she explains on her website 1derful Cakes, Kock is a nurse from Santiago who also discovered her love for baking in 2012. Her baking career saw her compete in contests around her home of Austin until she reached the point where she also offered her baking services in a professional capacity.
So this dream team set out to win the Holiday Wars.
Unfortunately, they didn't.
On December 6, Kock shared a post on her Instagram account with all the rhetoric of a contestant leaving the competition: "Last night was our last presentation at this season of Holiday Wars. We really did all the best we could with what we had in our hands as a team."
While Kock says she fully intends to compete in another challenge some day, she slips that Yadao has burnt out on the stressful schedule. "Orly Yadao I know you decide not competing anymore but don't be surprised if one day you receive an invitation from ME to go together in another challenge," she wrote. Church wasn't mentioned nor have Church or Yadao shared their disqualification. This lack of engagement could easily mean that the other two members are simply less interested in social media. However, it could also speak to a missing chemistry which teams like Bakers from Toyland have used to their advantage.