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Food Network champ not just making doughnuts in Stoddard

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The contestants pose for a photo, as seen on Holiday Baking Championship Special (PHOTO: Food Network)

There are so many funny oddities to Jen Barney, it’s hard to pick the best one.

Barney is the owner of Meringue Bakery in Stoddard, Wis.

Barney

Over the past two Christmases, the Chippewa Falls native has won back-to-back Food Network baking competitions.

So, right there, this premise that this Stoddard, Wisconsin mother/baker travels to New Orleans and wins the Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship, then comes back this year and wins a one-show Christmas Eve cook off against past champions, is ready for, not the Food Network, but a Hallmark movie premier.

But where her story begins — and this of course is nowhere near the entire story, just some funny parts Barney talked about Thursday afternoon on WIZM (listen here) — is also quite peculiar.

“So my mom hated it when I baked in the kitchen,” Barney said. “I think my mom — bless her heart, because we had home-cooked meals three times a day — so by the time I came around (wanting to cook) she was exhausted.”

Barney, who will be on Coulee Region Cooks with Mike Hayes on Thursday, also mentioned her parents owned a restaurant. So more cooking and more cleaning, probably wasn’t mom’s favorite thing to do with daughter.

But that’s not quite where it ends, and Barney made sure to emphasize this wasn’t parent bashing. She says they’re ridiculously supportive — they did rent out a movie theater to watch the season finale on the Food Network last year — but they weren’t all that excited when she decided to change up career paths from being an art teacher.

“When I told my parents I wanted to drop out and go to culinary school,” she explained, “they both sat me down and were very stern with me and said, ‘Look, this doesn’t seem like a good choice. You’re just going to be making doughnuts the rest of your life.’”

So, her parents were looking out for their daughter — afraid she’d be making doughnuts all her life. Now, it’s more like they’re ecstatic, she’ll be able to make doughnuts all her life. Beautiful doughnuts, along with cupcakes and wedding cakes and whatever else her clients come up with.

Things have changed quite a bit in the past year and change for Barney. Shows on national TV will do that.

“Before we started this journey with the shows, I was just thinking that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, who just did wedding cakes on the weekends,” Barney said. “And then, when the kids were in school, I could think about maybe having a downtown shop in La Crosse.”

Oh, the shop is still in the works. She said stay tuned, news could be coming soon on that. But, it’s all coming sooner, than later now that she has some clout behind her business.

As for winning those two Food Network show competitions, Barney said it was slow, steady building of confidence during the first season, while the Christmas Eve special came more naturally.

“This time around I had a little bit more confidence, where I just felt like I belonged there,” she said. “I was maybe a little bit more insecure last time.”

Which is something to, perhaps, be expected for a mother and bakery owner out of Stoddard. Now, however, she’s coming for La Crosse and, after that, who knows?

Host of WIZM's La Crosse Talk PM | University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point graduate | Hometown: Greenville, Wis | Avid noonball basketball player and sand volleyballer in La Crosse

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