Tamera Mowry-Housley and Vaughn Vreeland Bring Baking Traditions To Hallmark Channel In Baked With Love: Holiday
Watching Hallmark Christmas movies has become as much of a holiday tradition as baking with your loved ones. Now the network is bringing the magic together in Baked With Love: Holiday. Hosted by Tamera Mowry-Housley with guest judges New York Times cooking producer Vaughn Vreeland and renowned Chef Anna Haugh, ten home bakers face off in a family recipe bake-off. Mowry-Housley and Vreeland sat down with Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado to talk about the new show.
Mowry-Housley is no stranger to hosting a baking show, but what made this show different was the way it celebrated a diverse array of family heritage. “It combines all the things that I absolutely love. Christmas, baking, and family traditions. This show is about these pairs facing off [and] baking their Christmas bakes that have been passed down through their families from generation to generation,” she told me. “You feel that, you see that. I love that the pairs are family members. I grew up cooking and baking in my family. There's just something that happens when you're together, especially if baking is a love language. It is multiplied, right? Because you're with the person you love baking something you love to share your love. So, it truly was a love fest filming this.”
Those family stories were crucial when it came to judging the bakes each episode. “The experience of the flavors, the texture I think is pretty easy for me to approach with a very crucial eye, but then also you have these stories that these people are telling behind what they made. That is almost just as important, if not more important than the actual like, ‘Could I get this from a French bakery of sorts?’ As long as it was like really made with the love and the expression of your family and your story in mind, that was something that was important for me as a through line from week to week,” shared Vreeland. “You'll see a lot of growth and you'll have your own team that you're going to be rooting on or maybe a couple teams that you're going to be rooting on because you believe in them so much. There's so much potential from every single one of these teams from the jump.”
Each episode is structured with a more technical challenge, followed by a home bake challenge. “Being on a competition, you're not only making this thing, but you're in front of cameras and you're talking to producers and you're talking to Tamara and you're talking to me and Anna,” shared Vreeland. “There's so much more that's going into it than just like being in the comfort of your kitchen baking."
“It was interesting how you could have a pair maybe struggle one week and then the next week just kill it,” said Mowry-Housley. “It was like they were a little bit more comfortable with the family recipe, right?”
What might surprise people about the show? “[The bakers] genuinely do not know what is happening. They genuinely have never made it before most of the time. Like I was shocked to find out how many people had never made a pie before coming on to this show,” revealed Vreeland, with Mowry-Housley laughing: “There were some that, remember, we were like, ‘You've never made this before?!’ and then some you were like, ‘Yeah, we can tell.’”
“I can't tell you anything,” teased Mowry-Housley when asked about the Countdown to Christmas movie the winner’s recipe will be featured in. “Let me try. I will tell you this. The contestants were obviously excited to win $50,000, but they were just as excited to have this family recipe be featured in a Hallmark Christmas movie because I believe Hallmark Christmas movies have now become a part of America's pop culture. So that was huge for them.”
“Hopefully, it'll be one of mine. I'll just say that selfishly,” she added.
Baked With Love: Holiday premieres October 27 on Hallmark Channel, with new episodes airing every Monday.
