The icing on the cake: Galway baker wins €40,000 Netflix crown

Canadian-born Corinna Maguire, who has called Galway home for almost two decades, is the Oranmore-based cake artist behind Lovin’ from the Oven. She hopes to bring her creative skills to film and television, having completed a course in prop and model making with WWETB in Wexford.

“I’m actually trying to shift over kind of sideways into model making for movies and TV,” she said.

Her ambitions come after winning the second season of Is It Cake? Halloween with a dirty chai cake disguised as an eerie graveyard scene, complete with a weathered “RIP” headstone and a zombie emerging from the ground.

The Netflix competition challenges bakers to fool celebrity judges with cakes disguised as real objects, with the Halloween edition giving those edible illusions a frightening twist.

Corinna’s banter with comedian and host Mikey Day was a recurring feature of the show. Day mimicked her Irish accent, while she pulled him up on his distinctly American pronunciation of Galway as “Gal-way”. Oranmore proved easier for him to master.

And it was as “the pride of Oranmore” that he introduced her as the winner in the final, released on Netflix on October 9.

“Oh, damn it. I’m crying now,” she said.

“My son has been watching this competition, and he’s been saying that I would do well, and I was always like, ‘No, you know, like, these people are way better than me.’ But I’m here, baby.”

As she accepted her crown and took her place on the winner’s throne, she joked: “Can’t wait to wear this on the plane ride home.”

Galwegians were among her biggest supporters, including the team at Brazco Coffee Academy in Oranmore, where she previously worked. They cheered on “our very own Oranmore Cake Queen”, recalling her live cake builds in the Brazco Glassroom.

“The reaction from everybody is overwhelming as well,” she told the Connacht Tribune.

“I’m getting random messages from people just saying how happy they are for me and all the rest. It’s just been lovely.”

Previously a freelance graphic designer with an office in Galway, Corinna moved her work home after becoming pregnant and missed having a creative outlet.

“So then I started making cakes for my daughter. And then her friends wanted cakes, and then their parents wanted cakes, and then they knew people getting married who wanted cakes,” she said.

Requests to teach followed, first locally, then across Ireland and eventually around the world.

Her cake artistry has also earned her international awards and brought television success, including appearances on Food Network’s Halloween Wars and a win on The Big Bake.

A friend’s request for a birthday cake resembling a loaf of bread introduced her to hyperrealistic baking, while her love of creating eerie characters made the Halloween competition an ideal fit.

“I can’t actually watch a horror movie, but I love creating all the scary stuff.”

Her son Cormac, now 14, was among those who encouraged her to enter, along with friends.

“I ended up getting on the show, and that in itself was a win.”

Even then, she struggled to imagine taking the title, until a friend suggested this could be her year.

“Then I just kind of told myself, ‘Who says that I can’t do it?’”

Despite extensive preparation before travelling to Los Angeles to film, a dragon skull challenge almost derailed her progress.

“There was no day, prior to going for the show, that there weren't three cakes in my fridge at all times.”

The skull she had to recreate was much larger than the one she had practised with, forcing her to bake again within the eight-hour time limit.

“I ended up having to do a full rebake of that cake,” she said. “I had to work double fast.”

As time ran out, she focused on the side facing the panel.

“I concentrated all of my energy on one side of the cake that the judges would see.”

The strategy worked, securing her place in the final. With fellow contestant Bonne Bedingfield as her assistant, her zombie and gravestone creation fooled the judges again, earning her the top prize.

Asked about her plans for the money, she joked: “I need to pay some bills, but no, I definitely want to treat myself, so if you have any ideas, that’ll be great.”

Despite the pressure, she thoroughly enjoyed filming.

“I’m actually surprised that they didn’t have a clip of me saying, ‘This is the best craic ever,’ because I said it about 20 times at least,” she said.

There has been little time to rest since. Corinna is working on Curse of the Pirate Queen, a haunted pirate ship attraction for Cake International at Birmingham’s NEC from November 6–8.

“Right now, I’m surrounded by five-foot Kraken tentacles, a five-foot anchor, a prison gate and loads of other stuff,” she said.

Back home in Oranmore, she was recently reminded of her newfound recognition while putting up Halloween decorations outside her home. Two little local girls approached, shy and giggling, to tell her how much they had enjoyed watching her on the show.

“It was adorable,” she said.

Asked whether children might now try to eat her Halloween decorations, she joked that she needed warning signs out front: “This is not cake.”