Courtesy of Food Network
Portrait of Tarek Husseini, as seen on Kids Baking Championship, Season 7.
The average 13-year-old might be obsessed with Fortnite, soccer, or skateboarding. Tarek Husseini? He just wants to bake the perfect cake.
Tarek, an eighth-grader at Ladue Middle School, is a finalist on the Food Network’s seventh season of Kids Baking Championship. He’s been impressing viewers with his made-from-scratch cakes and pies—often with whimsical touches like a cute hedgehog or starry night sky cut from the pastry. Next, at 8 p.m. Monday, September 16, he'll bake confections with an “Out of This World Cakes” theme—and compete for that $25,000 grand prize.
This baking whiz kid is mainly self-taught, having polished his baking techniques while studying YouTube videos. He’s been helping in the kitchen since he was 5 and says he now knows way more about baking than his mom.
As for baking classes? He’s only taken one.
The biggest challenge of a televised baking contest is the lack of recipes on set. Just like the grown-ups, the junior bakers, ages 10 to 13, are required to memorize all of their favorite recipes.
“I memorized a lot of base recipes. I don’t know how many!” Tarek says. He committed to memory simple recipes for cakes, cookies, pies, tarts, and anything else that might come up on the show. Because of this, he was able to improvise when given his surprise ingredients for the day’s episode.
Kids Baking Championship is filmed on the same set as the network's adult competitions. Tarek says they were shown around the kitchen and instructed how to use ovens, fancy microwaves, and his favorite, the blast chiller. The only concession given to the junior bakers is a box to stand on, for shorter contestants.
The show was filmed during the summer, but Tarek says it wasn't anything like going to summer camp. For one thing, he brought his mom along and stayed in a hotel for the four weeks it took to record the competition. Although each episode is condensed down to an hour, it takes a long time to record the contest plus all the additional voiceovers and judging segments.
But it wasn’t all grueling time in the kitchen. The kids got to enjoy their stay in California and went sightseeing around Los Angeles when they weren't on set.
Tarek dreams of one day becoming a professional pastry chef, or maybe a food scientist. Until then, he’s started a budding online baking business. You can check out his pastries on his Instagram, where he’s been recreating each episode’s recipe. He sells his goods to friends and neighbors.
Courtesy of Food Network
Tarek Husseini shaking powder sugar into his mixer bowl, as seen on Kids Baking Championship, Season 7.
Tarek says he believes baking shows like Kids Baking Championship encourage other kids to enter if they have the chance. Often, the kids competing became friends. When you watch the episodes, you can see them encouraging each other, sharing ingredients. and even bouncing ideas off of each other as they work at a frantic pace.
His friends and school teachers are showing him a lot of support—even though the contest finished months ago, he’s been sworn to secrecy about the winner.
