Carmel Valley Ranch pastry chef takes the cake in Ultimate Baking Championship
After a long Monday at the office, the classroom, the clinic, you enjoy your evening meal and then sink into the couch and flick on the tube, hoping to find something entertaining, inspiring, even; just nothing that's going to make you sleep with the lights on. You land on the Food Network's "Ultimate Baking Championship" and wonder if you'll discover a contestant you want to root for.
Enter Chef Molly Coen, who just happens to live in Monterey. You text your friends, you lean in, and you witness her talents, realizing not only can she bake, design, decorate, craft, but she also never seems to lose her cool. Plus, she champions the success of her opponents.
She's your gal, the one to watch. After a few episodes, you begin to believe she could actually win this thing. On that final night (May 4), you stand, just to give her solidarity. And then, by gosh, she wins. Molly Coen is crowned the Ultimate Baking Champion. You cheer as if you know her, nearly weep as if you had something to do with it.
And you know she earned every penny of that $50,000 prize. You watched her do it, besting 15 other premier pastry chefs, ultimately Florencia Breda, a chocolatier from San Luis Obispo County, and Clément Le Déoré of San Diego.
On that award-winning night, each of the final three chefs was assigned to create a triad of complementary desserts portraying a theme. Coen was assigned a "rock 'n' roll after party." She created a blackout entremet made of multiple layers and textures, and a yuzu bonbon that screamed "backstage celebration," plus a cake resembling celebratory cigars and a VIP backstage pass made of chocolate.
At the end of her presentation, Coen dramatically dropped a chocolate mic. That may have sealed the deal. The network even named this last episode, "Drop the Mic." Yet, according to the judges, her entire presentation was a triumph.
‘Turns out our hometown hero is the pastry chef for Carmel Valley Ranch, a gig she landed before she started the show and something she could not reveal until she'd finished the competition, victorious. She couldn't breathe a word of it to anyone until the show aired.
"After the third episode of the show, I accepted the offer to join Carmel Valley Ranch as their pastry chef, but I told them they'd have to wait six weeks for me to start," Coen said. "On Sept. 11, the show wrapped, and three weeks later, I started the job."
Bonding over baking
Baking for Coen is practically a birthright. While she was growing up, the only television channel her dad would let his kids watch was the Food Network. While spending time with her grandmother, typically they were in the kitchen, baking.
"My grandmother grew up in Eastern Colorado during the Great Depression. Her baking was simple but so good," Coen said. "Her biscuits-yeast-raised, not butter-and gravy were amazing. When I graduated from college, I was bestowed the recipe."
Her grandmother would pull out her church cookbook or her classic Betty Crocker red-and-white gingham cookbook, she said, and bake themed holiday cookies or the classic Barbie cake.
"I miss her," said Coen, "but I got to watch an episode of the Ultimate Baking Championship with her."
Coen was in the seventh grade when she knew she wanted to become a pastry chef. After high school, she went off to Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, which prizes bold thinking, learning by doing and innovation. Following her win, the University posted a shout-out to their alumna via Facebook.
"At first, I imagined becoming like ‘Cake Boss' and making amazing cakes," she said. "But I realized that wasn't my passion. Especially after interning under Chef Ben Kallenbach, executive pastry chef at The Ballantyne Hotel & Lodge in Charlotte, who took me under his wing and taught me so much about quality ingredients and how to create plated desserts."
Realizing she couldn't wait to go to work every day, to learn how to make something new, she understood her passionate pursuit.
After working as a teaching assistant for two years at Johnson & Wales, Coen became the first executive chef at "Fig Tree," known as the "premier dining experience" in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was during this time she began looking into baking competitions to enter.
Zoe Peckich, Coen's best friend from college, who won the 2023 Summer Baking Championship with her chocolate chile cake with spicy mango and chocolate buttercream, passed baking show inquiries on to Coen. Within weeks, she had been tapped to compete on the Ultimate Baking Championship.
"All I did to prepare," she said, "was laminate croissants in one day, study up on temperatures and techniques, and trust that what was meant to be would be."
By episode seven, Coen just felt thankful to still be in the competition
Although she admitted during the show that if she won the competition, she would put the $50,000 toward buying a house, Coen has put that on the back burner while she gets on a plane, planning to eat her way through Greece for a couple of weeks or so.
She's earned it.
In the meantime, Carmel Valley Ranch is presenting a rotating offering of Chef Coen's competition entries on their menu. Guests can look forward to her "Campfire S'mores" from episode seven, through the summer.
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