A Food Network chef challenges two MS Coast TikTok stars to a king cake cook off
Caroline Davis of Bay St. Louis started a TikTok account in November 2020 so she could make sure her teenagers weren’t up to anything crazy on the popular video sharing app.
She got serious about the account a year later. She told her kids that one day she would have one million followers and be sponsored by Walmart. They thought she was nuts.
Today, Davis has 1.3 million followers and, yes, a Walmart sponsorship.
Matthew Bounds of Gulfport joined TikTok about a year ago to help boost a friend’s videos.
He shared DIY videos about gardening and cooking. He was pleasantly surprised when the cooking videos caught on and his following grew to more than 327,000. Bounds also discovered a community of home chefs, Davis among them.
They both use simple ingredients available at any grocery store and spice their videos with humor.
Today, Davis and Bounds are cooking for a cause. Helping others through their videos is important to both of them.
Bounds, whose TIkTok handle is @yourbarefootneighbor, was astonished and delighted when Food Network star and Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian promoted their latest fundraiser in a TikTok video.
Zakarian challenged the seven home chefs participating in the HomeChef Throwndown to make savory (not sweet) king cakes in his 11-inch cast iron skillet with nonstick coating.
“I about fell out of my chair,” Bounds said.
Zakarian even sent them the skillets.
Using TikTok for worthy causes
A fellow home chef on TikTok told Davis and Bounds about Lasagna Love and enlisted their help in the seven-week fundraiser for the organization, which pairs people willing to provide a meal with those in need.
Zakarian’s challenge comes in the HomeChef Throwdown’s third week.
Each week, the chefs video a cooking challenge to see who gets the most votes. People can vote free once a week, then buy extra votes for $1 each, with proceeds going to Lasagna Love.
On Thursday, Bounds, Davis (@mississippi_kween on TikTok) and the other chefs will post videos of their latest challenge from Zakarian. Sponsors have signed on to have their products promoted during each week’s challenge.
“It’s kind of taken on this whole life of its own,” Bounds said.
Bounds never would have pictured himself in a cooking challenge a few years ago. When the pandemic started, he didn’t even know how to scramble an egg.
In fact, he didn’t like himself very much. He was irritable and unpleasant, he said.
He deleted all his social media accounts and decided he should start focusing on helping others. No longer commuting to work during the pandemic, he also found time to start cooking, something he’d always wanted to do.
He said that he was in a much better place by the time he joined TikTok about a year ago.
A year after she joined TikTok, Davis was fed up with her corporate job. She put in two weeks’ notice without any idea how she would earn a living. She decided to start a cleaning business and take TikTok more seriously.
She noticed people really liked her cooking videos, so she started making more and grew her following. She also published a cookbook. Now, she’s her own boss. Both her cleaning business and TikTok following are growing.
Both Davis and Bounds have hosted previous fundraisers that were big successes.
“To me, there’s no point in having a platform as big as I have if I’m not using it for something good,” Davis said.
This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 9:07 AM.
