How did Middle GA’s cookie master fare in the ‘Halloween Baking Championship?’

Middle Georgia’s cookie master Cory Jones may not have won the title or the $25,000 prize from the “Halloween Baking Championship,” but he still walked away a winner from the Food Network show.

Jones, the owner of Sweet Evelyn’s in downtown Perry, was among four finalists who competed in the finale Monday night.

“Halloween being my favorite, I really wanted this one, and I got so very close,” said Jones of Unadilla. “It was like a roller coaster.”

Starting at the bottom three of 10 contestants in the first episode that aired Sept. 15, Jones climbed the ladder and ended up winning two of the seven episodes.

“I still feel like I’m walking away a winner,” Jones told The Telegraph. “I did not win the title. I did not win the money. But what I did win was the invaluable friendships and the invaluable relationships with all of the cast, producers and all of that is something that money can’t buy and that money can’t replace.”

His fans also count Jones a winner.

“Not only are you our winner & baking guru, but Perry is the biggest winner having you & Sweet Evelyn’s on Carroll Street,” Valeria Beckham Moore posted on Facebook.

Jess Kilgore posted, “So proud of you! You are so good at everything you do! I have loved watching you become so successful and I can’t wait to see what grand adventure you are on next.”

Dianna Hinson Hall posted, “You were amazing and represented GA, Unadilla and Perry so well. You’re always a first class winner to us.”

Jones also won the “keys to the downtown district,” a way in which Historic Downtown Perry celebrates milestones of downtown business owners. Jones is expected to be presented with a ceremonial key by the Main Street Advisory Board on Friday, which is Halloween, in recognition of his achievements on the show.

Missed seeing Jones in the finale? Here’s a recap

Set in a “haunted mansion,” comedian and actor Tom Henson hosted the show. Renowned pastry chefs Carla Hall, Zac Young and Stephanie Boswell were the judges.

In the final episode of Season 11, Jones and three other contestants faced off in two baking challenges.

In the first challenge themed “Haunted Grounds,” coffee bags were dropped and contestants were told they have to use coffee in their dessert.

The contestants then had to run and grab for something that would be on the grounds of a haunted mansion for the shape of the dessert. The options were a gazebo, a hedge maze, a tree, and a fountain.

Jones got the gazebo.

“I did want the hedge maze just because I thought it would be unique,” said Jones, who’s known best for his hand painted cookies as well as drop cookies. “But knowing how to do structural cookie stuff with gingerbread, I did get the gazebo and I was fine with that.”

The task of building a gazebo was difficult.

“I think I was using every canned good in the pantry to try to put it in for stabilization to hold it up,” Jones said.

He created a pumpkin spice latte cookie with a cookie butter filling and then built the gazebo on top.

“The gazebo had to be haunted,” Jones said. “So mine was like where you would enter the gazebo, had a face like with a tongue sticking out so like it was deranged.”

Alan Arras, a pastry sous chef based in Orlando, Florida, won that challenge with his scary hedge maze creation. The win also gave Arras an advantage in the finale’s next challenge.

In the second challenge, contestants were asked to write down two horrific ways they did not want to die. Jones wrote down being skinned alive and being eaten alive by bugs.

Arras’ advantage, which was revealed at this point in the show, was to take all the gruesome death suggestions and assign them to anyone he wanted. Arras gave Jones the challenge of depicting drowning.

Jones rose to the challenge with a chocolate fudge cake with orange curd and toffee.

“I soaked my chocolate fudge cake with coffee liqueur,” Jones said. “So, it’s kind of like a chocolate orange type cake.”

“Drowning, I don’t know if you can even think about how you would make drowning into a gory cake, but drowning is not very gory,” Jones said. “So this to me was incredibly difficult because there’s no blood involved or anything like that. So I had to be very creative.”

To create a drowning effect, Jones poured sugar water over the whole cake “like a big puddle that hung over the edges of the cake and I did like a half profile of a face like sticking up out of the water.

“And then under the water, which was actually on the cake portion, it looked like underground water and it had like fingers and a hand that was coming up and then a chain was in the hand so it was like holding them under water.”

Melanie Bjork-Jensen, a self-taught baker from West Jordan, Utah, not only won that challenge but also won the “Halloween Baking Championship.”

Her winning cake was an all black Gothic-style cake with heavy piping detail with a layer of gore of guts at the bottom as if someone had been squashed by the cake. Her assignment was to depict being crushed to death.

Jones shares reflections on the show

A key takeaway for Jones from competing in the “Halloween Baking Championship” is that there’s much more involved than how the desserts taste.

Not only do contestants have to bake like crazy, but they also have to be a good storyteller and a good artist, he said.

“You need to be a total package,” Jones said. “And then, another thing I learned from this show specifically is always step outside your comfort zone and do something you don’t always do.

“That is exactly what I did with this show, which in turn allowed me to bring those things back to my community and offer more than just cookies. So I think that all of that together is a big win, not only for me but for our community as well.”

In 2023, Jones competed in the Food Network’s “Holiday Wars.” His team won. He made his debut on the Food Network in the 2022 “Christmas Cookie Challenge.”

Jones was asked if he’d like to be on another Food Network competition.

“My biggest thing that I always leave people with is to stay tuned because I don’t feel like my time is up,” Jones said. “I feel like they like me. I like doing it. I have the skill set. I have the personality, and I’m sure you’ll see me again on the TV.”

Although the final episode aired Monday night on the Food Network, the finale will stream Tuesday on HBO Max. Fans can also binge-watch the show on Amazon Video.