Valley woman and daughter cook it up on 'The Food Network'

EDINBURG – A mother and daughter team will appear today on the "Food Network" with a chef making a cake.

Erika Soto and her daughter, Taylor Molina, 11, will appear at 7 p.m. on the popular television show. Soto will work with a professional pastry chef while Molina makes brief appearances to comment on the process. Soto and the chef will build a cake in celebration of the Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant’s 15-year anniversary.

"Basically what happened was my daughter does beauty pageants with Universal Royalty, and it’s based out of Austin," Soto said. "The director got in contact with the Food Network and asked them to do a cake to celebrate the anniversary."

Four mother and daughter teams were selected to visit Denver in October where the mother worked with a pastry chef for eight hours on a cake that best represented the pageant. Each team helped its chef build a cake that would compete for a $10,000 prize. The winning chef received the prize money.

"Basically, we had to get in the kitchen. We all had mikes for eight consecutive hours and helped out the pastry chef, everything from rolling out the fondant, it’s kind of like an icing, and then we gave them ideas on designing the cake," Soto said. "They had a sketch and material pertaining to that sketch. And we would tweak the cake. ‘Do this color. Remove that, it has nothing to do with the pageant. Do the dress like this, to get it to be the theme of Universal Royalty.’ "

Soto said she and her daughter flew to Denver on Oct. 11 and reported to the studio the following morning.

"We had a 7:30 meeting and what I did was I met with the producer," she said. "It was in a green room and she just sat down and she asked me different questions, give a little detail about your little girl in the pageant, what my experience was in the kitchen, like if I was good at baking, things like that."

The producer also asked what kinds of ideas she had for the cake, what she thought her chances were for winning, and what was her strategy for winning. The producer also wanted to see the clothing the mother and daughter teams had brought to make sure they didn’t clash with the green room where the interviews took place.

The following day the four mothers spent the whole eight hours working on the cake with their respective chefs.

"We filmed for eight straight hours. It was no breaks, no nothing," Soto said. "I did not even eat that day for eight hours because you get so into making this cake. She (the chef) never took a break; I never took a break. We were just working on this cake. I was just doing whatever she was telling me. ‘Cut out this, or make me some molded rose petals. Work on this crown for me. Can you make some fake rollers that we’d put on our cake?’ I’d just do what she asked me to do. And they’re just filming the whole time with the cameras right on your face."

Who won the contest?

"We’re not supposed to tell," she said.

Viewers can find out by watching the Food Network tonight at 7 p.m.