The sweet taste of success

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

JOLIET — “Food Network Challenge” competitor Miguel Garcia returned to his alma mater with sweet advice for Joliet Central High School students.

“Keep on studying and don’t give up on your dreams,” Garcia said Friday.

Cake designers Garcia, 25, and Orlando Serrano, 41, competed together four times on “Food Network Challenge” before winning. The cooking show pits professional chefs against each other in a timed competition in their specialty. Winners take home a gold medal and $10,000.

Garcia, who graduated from Joliet Central in 2003, returned Friday to share his recipe for success with the school’s hospitality classes.

“We went through four losing competitions. We could have stopped, given up and just said, ‘No, we are not going to win any of these things,’” Garcia said. “Then, we just kept winning, winning and winning. You just have to push yourself consistently and just keep going.”

Serrano has competed 10 times on “Food Network Challenge,” eight times with Garcia. The duo has won the grand prize of $10,000 five times.

When they aren’t competing on the food-themed TV channel, they work together designing custom cakes in Plainfield. They rent a kitchen and design cakes that clients order by phone or through www.orlandoserranocakes.com. They have made cakes for Oprah Winfrey, Joan Cusack and even a bust of Jerry Springer.

‘Food Network Challenge’

In the past four years, they have made cakes with “Shrek,” “Toy Story 3” and extreme Mardi Gras themes for “Food Newtwork Challenge” episodes.

Serrano is the cake master and Garcia’s expertise is building — giving them the ability to create cakes that talk and move for the wow factor judges love.

For the show’s urban legend challenge, the duo made the first talking cake to appear on Food Network.

“We decided to do a lady who likes her hair in a certain way and leaves it up for 23 years and spiders grow in her hair,” Garcia said. “Our cake was the character calling her friend telling her that spiders were in her hair.”

In creating the 150-pound talking cake, Garcia researched animatronics and built the parts to get the old lady to complain and blink.

“I didn’t know how to make the animatronics face move, but I researched it and I created it,” Garcia said. “It’s just about what you can do with yourself and what you can push yourself to do.”

He showed the students a video of the cake: a woman with a purple beehive hairdo yelling to her friend about what was happening to her beautiful hair. The video can be viewed at www.orlandoserranocakes.com.

On that episode, Serrano said, “The face is working. I feel fantastic because this is something that has never been done with cake.”

It’s nice to win the big bucks on the show because Serrano and Garcia pay for their own materials when they compete, with Food Network reimbursing them for travel, hotel and meals.

‘Last Cake Standing’

Recently, they competed for their biggest prize — $100,000 — in another Food Network reality elimination series. In “Last Cake Standing,” contestants are asked to do crazy things while making their cake. The show premieres at 9 p.m. April 3.

“There’s lots of drama,” Garcia said.

They can also win the title of the best cake artist in America, Serrano said.

In the first episode, they got to pick a monster to make a cake of — but it had to be 7 feet tall, Garcia said.

“It was just enormous,” he said.

Though the show hasn’t aired yet, it has been filmed. Did the local duo have the last cake standing?

Competitors aren’t allowed to reveal that until the episodes are shown, so you’ll have to watch to find out.

Learning and teaching

Serrano has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, focusing on animation, from the Art Institute at Columbia College. He also graduated from Kendall College in Evanston, studying pastry. Garcia didn’t go to culinary school, but learned everything from Serrano.

Teaching students how to put a border on a cake Friday, Serrano also offered tips for success.

“Pursue something that you really love doing. If you have a passion, pursue that,” Serrano said. “I always knew that I loved drawing and some way or another, I would be able to do something artistic.”

Anahi Ramirez, 17, tried to decorate the cake because Serrano made it look easy.

“I think it was really hard because I’ve never done it before,” she said. “I was really nervous. I’m a really shy person. When I was up there, I was shaking. … Even though they are not really famous people, they have been on TV. I was really nervous.”

Teacher Rochelle Bjelland thought the chefs shared great advice.

“I think it’s great for the kids because they can see success comes from JT and outside of JT. You can be successful after leaving here,” Bjelland said. “It’s nice for the kids, especially if they are going into this field. They don’t see a lot of it out there besides (famous chef) Emeril (Lagasse) and all that. This is local. This is success.”