Long Island's Sydney Perry wins Food Network's 'Spring Baking Championship: Easter'

West Hempstead bakery owner Sydney Perry beat out seven other bakers including the pastry chef of a Michelin three-star restaurant to win Food Network's "Spring Baking Championship: Easter," which reached its season-1 finale Monday night.

"We were standing there and they said my name and it was almost, like, 'Wait a minute. Was that my name?’ " Perry, who with her husband owns Sydney's Sweets, told Newsday by phone the next morning. "I was, like, 'Oh my God, this is real. This really happened!' I was so excited. I barely could get any words out. I was just overcome with emotions."

Emotions, plus the $25,000 grand prize awarded within the Golden Egg trophy. "On the show the Golden Egg is filled with fake money, for décor, and the real [money comes as] a direct deposit," she says. While the show filmed over the summer in Long Island City, the prize is not awarded "until the episode airs, so I'll be eagerly checking my account!" she says, chuckling. 

Perry, 38, who lives in South Floral Park with her husband Jermaine and their 8-year-old son Cameron, was a finalist along with Brittany Lombardi of Little Cake Baker, in the Bronx, and Tatiana Kovalenko of Skazka Cakes, in Midland Park, New Jersey. For the final challenge, each had an eliminated baker as assistant, with Perry getting Whitney Ronzello of Blue Horse Bakery in Nacogdoches, Texas. The task: create a 4-foot-tall edible Easter basket filled with desserts and an Easter cake.

"I've done big cakes before," Perry says, "but four feet, that's massive. So it was quite the undertaking to make a cake that big in the amount of time we had. And you also had to make all the stuff to go inside the basket."

The design came from "the kind of baskets that I got as a kid," she says. "So it was a white basket with weaving on the bottom and it was filled with all kinds of pretty pastel treats. Inside there were sugar cookies and loads of fondant flowers." The cake "was a large egg, chocolate with coffee-liqueur cream filling, also covered in pastel colors."

Judges Jordan Andino and Stephanie Boswell and host Sunny Anderson each had a taste of the final three creations, though none of the bakers sampled each other's or even their own. "Things just moved so rapidly," Perry says. After the judging, "The cakes were just gone!" Did the producers give it to the crew members? "I have no idea. I do know they didn't give it to the bakers," she says with a laugh, "because I didn't get any!"
Perry, who celebrated the finale Monday with family and friends at the Rockville Centre restaurant Grotto, says some of the prize money "of course will go toward our son's accounts to prepare him for the future." As well, "I'll probably take us on a nice family vacation. And I have some equipment that I've been eyeing for the bakery. When I was on the show, I got to use this fondant roller — I've seen them before and they're pretty expensive. But now," she says, "I have an extra chunk of change. I think I could get one."