Local contestant on Food Network's Holiday Baking Championship

So Santa hired 12 bakers to help him out. That's right. And they're all competing for the same thing, a $25,000 holiday bonus. This is it. Keep bringing this flavor. Oh, I love it. Along the way, they will face delicious challenges. What are we doing over here? It's just not looking how I wanted it to look. Did somebody move my cake? Mmm. It's going to be great, I swear. Joy breaks. Welcome back. It's time to get your taste buds going because we are in the kitchen. Business owner and chef Curtis Lamar is joining us live. He is here to talk about being a recent contestant on the Food Network and competing on Holiday Baking Championship. And he's also got something sweet to eat here. So good morning. How are you? Good morning. How are you doing? And I can't forget your co-chef over here that's gearing up with the gloves. Hi. Hello Chef, this is Chef Lamar. How are you doing today? Good. Are you ready to cook? Okay. All right. So first, before we start cooking, or you can start cooking as we're talking, tell me about what it was like to compete on the show. The show was amazing. They got to travel and meet a lot of talented bakers. It was one of my childhood dreams to get to be on Food Network, so I finally accomplished that. So it was like a dream come true. What do you have here today because I see a lot of a lot of I see some peach over here and I'm getting I'm like oh thanksgiving is coming up so you know being from the south of Atlanta definitely got to get the peaches so today I'm going to do a um a peach cobbler cheesecake parfait so kind of like just a nice little southern twist on like a classic so I'm gonna um Flambe, some caramelized peaches, a little bit of cognac. Then I'm going to layer that off with some cheesecake mousse. I'm going to need to take a little shot over here to wake me up. Some Biscoff cookies, some cheesecake mousse, and some butterscotch. And just turn it to layers. It's going to be really, really delicious. It sounds good. But then also, too, is this what you made on the show? What did you make during the competition? Well, the first episode just aired. So, of course, that one was... Eggnog, I did an eggnog cheesecake, cinnamon cake, and then I won the judges away with my chocolate cake. I got one of the best chocolate cakes in the country. You might have to come back for that one. Most definitely. All right, so how do we make this sweet treat that you got going here? So for the flambe peaches, you want to take yourself about a... Stick of butter. Okay. I'll let that butter melt down really good. Let it simmer a little bit. Give me a little, Chef. Sure. And once that's going, you're going to add in about maybe a half a cup of peaches. Oh, and it smells so good, guys. If you could be here and smell the aroma, my goodness gracious. And then you're going to add about two to three teaspoons of brown sugar. Okay, okay. Got to sweeten it up even more, huh? Most definitely. Add a dash of cinnamon. Come on, little chef. Yeah, we got to get the little chef going. Thank you. Okay. One more, one more of that. That's a big dash. Get it in there. There you go. Thank you, chef. Are you there? I'm going to let that cook down. Okay. All that sugar caramelized in the peaches. And so this is, this seems like a quick treat, right? Oh, yeah, this is quick. Because you're not cooking the peaches that long. No, you just want to get that, the caramel, just the sugar to caramelize the peaches. Let it break down. Add a little bit more sugar. Is this similar to when you were on the competition, we're telling you, you got this many seconds to go and you're getting the dishes going. The timer is real, that clock is live and you have no second chances, no cuts, no replays. And that was your first time, right, on a competition? Yes, very first time. How do you feel like you did? I did awesome. I've been doing it for so long, the nerves went away very fast. So I watched that cook up. Uh-oh, here's the best part, y'all. Oh, yeah. Back up, little chef. And then tell me about your background, right? Woo! Oh, I was not expecting that one. That woke me up for real. That was definitely. You know, let the alcohol cook out. Okay. Got to get it drenched into the peaches, right? Most definitely. So tell me about your history for those who are not familiar with your food, your taste. Tell me about how you started being a chef and where people can find you. Started being a chef very early. My mom can't cook as well. So I kind of like, you know, let me learn how to cook. Just throwing my mouth there like that. I know, it's crazy. I first started, I tried to burn my microwave down, trying to do fried chicken in the microwave. See, that was God telling you to go easy on your mama. It's not as easy as it looks, huh? It's really not. So I wanted to go full force in it and figure it out, get everything correct. So once... I did that, ended up going to Job Corps for cooking, left there, came back, went to Le Cordon Bleu, became one of the first pastry to go to receive an externship at Disney World. I got my start at Disney World. Wow, that's such an amazing experience. Yeah, I want to go too, right? So let's finish it up. We want to top it off so we can show the people what this final product is going to look like. All right. And now we have everything assembled, just give me a little chef. And little chef, what was your favorite part about this experience? What do you like about cooking? Go ahead and tell her. Tell me, what's your favorite part? You did a really good job over there. I saw you helping out. All right. Let's see the final product. The base will be your cookies. Okay. You're going to start off with a layer of cookies. You're going to start off with a You're going to start off with a layer of cookies. You're going to start off with a layer of cookies. You're going to start off with a layer of cookies. You're going to start off with a layer of cookies. You're going to start off with a layer of cookies. You're going to start off with a layer of cookies. A little layer of cookies. Your favorite part is eating, I know. Can I help? Then we're going to pipe in our cheesecake mousse. We're going to take our cheesecake mousse, and we're going to layer it with our cooked peaches. All right, guys, as we're wrapping up, you can watch new episodes of Holiday Bacon Baking Championship Monday nights on Food Network. The first episode is now available to watch on HBO Max.