Oceanside woman takes the cake on 'Great American Baking Show'

Note: All season 3 episodes of the streaming show premiered April 11 on The Roku Channel. This article contains a finale spoiler.

Long Island conquered England on season 3 of The Roku Channel’s “The Great American Baking Show,” as Oceanside actor and auto show manager Kim Goldfeder Clarke bested seven other amateur home bakers.

When her name was announced as the winner, “It was like those Hitchcock films where the camera zooms out but pulls in,” giving a vertiginous effect, the highly animated Clarke recalls.

“It was like time stood still. I’d honestly thought I did have a good chance to win, but being neurotic,” she continues lightheartedly, “I didn't want to jinx myself” during the final showdown. Judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith and hosts Casey Wilson and Zach Cherry “were not looking at me or making eye contact, and I didn't want to make any inference like, ‘Oh my God, they don't want to look at me because I lost.’ I don't know if you noticed, but Casey does this swoop thing with her head as if she's going to call somebody else, and then she swoops in my direction and says my name.”

The season shot at Pinewood Studios just outside of London in July and August, during which she celebrated her 55th birthday. “I flew over there on the 7th of July and I was there until August 2nd. So we shot the six episodes in succession, and there was six weeks prior to us going to England where we were practicing the signature and Showstopper bakes. The technical challenges were the ones that were completely blind. We had no idea what they would be, so that made for a little more excitement.”

Clarke, who was born in Queens but raised in Elmont, is the younger of two children of Marie and the late Alfred Goldfeder. She graduated from Elmont Memorial High School in 1987 and went on to receive a bachelor of arts degree from Binghamton University, where she studied theater and performed. She then won a vocal scholarship, she says, to the two-year American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan.

Clarke went on to a working-actor career in theater regionally and on tour, and appearing as an extra and occasionally featured extra on movies including “Party Girl” (1995) and TV shows including “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “The Americans,” where the experienced league bowler had to throw a series of strikes for the camera. She married now-retired NYPD Officer Gerald Clarke in 2002.

Growing up, “I used to watch my grandmother and my mom bake all the time,” she says. “I love to cook, but my first love is baking. And at first they'd be like, 'OK, Kimmy, here's a piece of dough. Go play in the corner with it,’ because I'm a child, 4 or 5 years old. But,” she adds, half-joking, “eventually they realized, ‘That's an extra set of hands. We're no fools!’ And they taught me how you weave some pastry dough and how you make rugelach and apple pie.” Some of her fondest memories, she says, are of watching PBS cooking shows with her grandmother.

In addition to acting, Clarke works for a California-based ad agency as a manager for auto shows and related promotional events — and also, less lucratively but with a worldwide fan base, her comedic online series “Mr. Bentley’s World,” with her pet bulldog. (The original Mr. Bentley died at age 12, and his grandnephew Mr. Oliver P. Bottomsley now stars.)

“I do volunteer work for Long Island Bulldog Rescue, and I helped spearhead a one-night fundraiser at New World Stages, and Petco found out about it, and we raised 25 grand” for the Melville-based organization. “So if this article helps some other bulldogs in need by mentioning them, God bless.”