Bend middle schooler bakes on Food Network show airing Monday

Published 1:00 pm Sunday, January 5, 2020

The upcoming eighth season of Food Network’s “Kids Baking Championship” will feature a Bend resident on its Monday premiere: 12-year-old Reggie Strom.

Reggie will compete against 11 other bakers, ages 10-13, for a $25,000 prize and a feature article in Food Network Magazine. On the show, contestants are eliminated one by one each week, until only three kid bakers are left standing in the March 9 finale episode.

Reggie, a seventh grader at Pacific Crest Middle School who was born and raised in Bend, said he was introduced to baking through his grandmother.

“I’d go to her house, and we’d always bake things,” he said. “Sometimes she’d have something new; sometimes it’d be the same.”

The young baker said he doesn’t have a go-to favorite type of dessert. He instead prefers to constantly try new things and customize recipes for friends and family, he said.

“I just like to make things that people like,” Reggie said.

After taking a couple classes on how to make French macarons at the Kindred Creative Kitchen in Bend, Reggie said the kitchen’s owner, Michele Morris, invited him to a specific class for young bakers interested in auditioning for “Kids Baking Championship.” Reggie said he learned more advanced techniques in that class, from perfecting fillings to mastering pastries.

Then, Reggie sent an audition video to Food Network. After a casting process, he was officially invited to the competition.

Reggie said the Food Network filmed all 10 episodes of the show in June at the network’s Los Angeles studios. He said he had a great time baking and hanging out with the show’s similarly minded young contestants.

“It was super fun, because I got to meet a ton of other kids who did the same thing,” Reggie said. “After we filmed an episode, we’d all go back to the pool and swim for a couple hours.”

Contestants are tasked with baking a new dessert each episode. Each week has a new, quirky theme, from desserts that look like sandwiches to llama-shaped cupcakes.

Because the show’s two hosts and judges — chefs and Food Network personalities Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman — didn’t reveal what the theme of the dessert was until baking began, Reggie said he had to learn to think on his feet.

“You just had to prepare for everything and anything,” he said.

Outside of baking, Reggie said he enjoys outdoor activities like hiking, skiing and camping, as well as spending time with his parents, Greg Strom and Julie Cavanaugh, and his dog Ruxin, an English bulldog-pit bull blend.

And although he loves baking, Reggie said he isn’t sure if he wants to pursue it as a career when he grows up.

“I’m too young to decide any of that,” he said. “But I think it would be fun to open a bakery, or work at one as a side job.”

The premiere episode of this season of “Kids Baking Championship,” featuring Reggie, will run at 9 p.m. Monday on the Food Network.