Bay St. Louis chef is back for another Food Network ‘Halloween Baking Championship’
She finished second in last year’s championship round of The Food Network’s “Halloween Baking Championship” and Renee Loranger of Bay St. Louis is back on the show for another season.
The show airs at 8 p.m. Mondays on Food Network, or streaming on Discovery+.
Loranger was one of two chefs added to this season’s show in the second episode, and her team finished in the top four. She and the other bakers from across the country are competing for the prize of $25,000.
The series, one of several Halloween-themed shows on the Food Network, features a new episode each Monday, leading up to Halloween. A contestant is eliminated at the end of each episode while the others move on to a new challenge.
“I have never done anything for TV before, but it has always been a dream to be on one of the Food Network shows,” said Loranger, an executive pastry chef and cake designer. “I especially like the Halloween Baking Championship show. So I was super excited to be chosen for that show in particular.”
Last year her chocolate haunted house wowed the judges, and she and the other contestants moved on to bake desserts for a vampire buffet, a demon doll cake and other frightful Halloween creations.
Loranger has entered cooking championships before and has become accustomed to challenges, first with Hurricane Katrina and most recently with the coronavirus.
She moved from California to the Gulf Coast in 2000, captivated by the area’s small-town feeling with a beach vibe.
“The Mississippi Gulf Coast is really beautiful, and I am super proud to represent the area,” she said.
Using her skills as a baker and cake designer, she was hired in 2000 to create the bakery program at Casino Magic in Bay St. Louis.
“I started the program from scratch and designed all the desserts for the property,” she said. “After Hurricane Katrina, the bakery was gone, so I went back as a restaurant manager,” she said.
By that time, the property had become Hollywood Casino, where she became executive pastry chef in 2012. She worked there until she was let go when the coronavirus closed all the Coast casinos this spring.
She continued baking and posts pictures of her elaborate cakes and Halloween creations on Instagram as she looks for the next opportunity.
“I am completely self-taught and on-the-job trained,” she said. “I am continuously teaching myself new things and new techniques.”
