TEMECULA: Local catering business owner wins on 'Cupcake Wars'


Andrea Maue, a 42-year-old Murrieta resident, said she hoped her two-plus decades working for restaurants and catering businesses would pay off when she competed on Food Network's reality show "Cupcake Wars."

It did ---- to the tune of $10,000 and a high-profile dessert catering gig. Maue won the episode she competed in, besting three other bakers for the top prize. That episode debuted Jan. 8 on the popular cable network channel and will continue to air throughout mid-January.

"It was awesome," Maue said of her victory. "It was surreal and exciting and a relief."

The weekly show pits four bakers against each other, each of whom brings one helper, or sous-chef. Maue's assistant was her sister-in-law, Murrieta resident Corie Maue, a mobile notary who also writes about food and is a board member for the nonprofit Temecula Valley Slow Food .

During each show, the four duos face off in three timed elimination challenges, their sweet creations juried by two professional bakers and one celebrity judge. There's frantic urgency as contestants scramble to beat the clock. In the final challenge, the remaining two teams must bake and decorate 1,000 cupcakes in two hours, although they are given four baking assistants.

Maue said the pandemonium played to one of her strengths.

"When you start your own catering company and you are on a budget, a lot of times you do all the jobs all by yourself," said Maue, owner of the 6-year-old Temecula-based Ava James Catering . "You get used to that whole scramble."

Throughout Maue's episode, judges complimented her cupcakes' flavor profiles and refined designs with which she adorned each of her creations.

"I felt like every one of your cupcakes was very good," judge Candace Nelson told Maue during the show. "The texture of your cakes was light and fluffy."

Maue said her many years as a self-taught chef, as well as a banquet and catering manager and business owner, is to thank for her success.

"When you are thrown curve balls like on 'Cupcake Wars,' you need to have a basic knowledge of food," she said. "Trial and error has made me savvy."

The show often challenges contestants to bake with unusual ingredients. In Maue's episode, dubbed "Final Cup(cake)," the top prize was an opportunity to bake cupcakes for the Major League Soccer championship game, so judges asked contestants to give them cupcakes with a "kick."

Bakers had to use ingredients from a table laden with spicy ingredients and accoutrements. Maue picked mesquite wood chips and banana peppers to create a zucchini and banana pepper cupcake with mesquite honey cream cheese frosting, topped with a smoked caramelized pineapple.

Her other winning creations were: a chocolate cupcake stuffed with a chocolate chile truffle, topped with milk chocolate butter-cream frosting; a green tea almond cupcake with green tea butter-cream frosting; and a vanilla bean cupcake with mascarpone frosting and a salted caramel drizzle.

"I am a nut about food and cooking," Maue said. "I don't know if it's the people-pleaser thing in me. I feel like I love people with my food."

Maue rents space from and often works in conjunction with EAT marketplace, or Extraordinary Artisan Table , which runs a 3,000-square-foot kitchen in west Temecula that offers catering services as well as cooking classes and a reservation-only organic food store.

EAT's owner, Leah DiBernardo, said she is very proud of Maue's victory.

"She is one of those chefs that make it happen," DiBernardo said. "She really is amazing."


