Nadia Cakes in Maple Grove

Photo: Emily J. Davis

Cupcake Wars winner Abby Jimenez brings her award-winning Nadia Cakes to Maple Grove.

Due to the extreme popularity of the original Nadia Cakes, Jimenez attracted national attention. She was on TLC's “Fabulous Cakes” twice, which eventually resulted in an invitation to be a contestant on an episode of “Cupcake Wars”. On the episode which aired in early January, she and her head pastry chef, Randi Valenzuela, were declared the winners of the $10,000 prize.

Cupcake contests are not all sweetness and light, as Jimenez and Valenzuela discovered during their “Cupcake Wars” experience. Not only did they not know who they were going to compete against until the day of filming, they were instructed not to speak to their competitors backstage and to make sure, a member of the production team escorted them every time they went back and forth between the kitchen area and their dressing room.

“This is a legitimate competition. The judges are very serious and they don’t even look at you until filming starts,” she says. “You’re working so hard. By the end of the day, I think I’d reapplied my make-up three times.”

Despite nerves and the pressure of a 14-hour day, Jimenez says by the third round, she felt confident about their victory. “When I saw our display, I started to cry because I knew we were going to win,” she says, adding with a laugh “I’m Sicilian, so I cry a lot.”

Judge Florian Bellanger, the Simon Cowell of the cupcake world, declared the Nadia Cakes cheesecake cupcake to be “one of the best cheesecake cupcakes he’s ever eaten”. Made with Madagascar bourbon vanilla bean, from-scratch pie crust, freshly made whipping cream and a triple-berry compote, Jimenez says it’s one of their most labor-intensive cupcakes, but a perennial customer favorite.

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