Hershey’s after dark: Local pastry duo team up to compete on Food Network’s new show
Two longtime friends who have served some delicious desserts locally, are taking their sweet smarts to a Food Network show next week.
Lyndsy Velasquez and Amy McBride are competing as a team in an episode of Chocolate Meltdown: Hershey’s After Dark that premieres Monday. There’s a watch party for the two at R.J. Gator’s off Cortez Road West, scheduled from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.
The episode airs at 10 p.m. ET on the Food Network and also is streaming on Discovery Plus.
It’s not the first time the duo are competing on national television, nor the first time they’ve worked together.
Velasquez previously won the 2018 Halloween Baking Championship competition on the Food Network, while McBride was on the 2020 Halloween Baking Wars show.
It’s just different and even more special this time working as a team.
“If she hadn’t been able to go, I’d probably just have said no,” said Velasquez, a Manatee High graduate. “She is my person when it comes to this kind of thing.”
Amy, who is from Sarasota, first met Lyndsy when she was 12. Lyndsy was holding cake decorating classes and Amy’s grandmother brought her for lessons. Velasquez taught her everything she knew and the two became fast friends to the point they teamed up for a chance at a $10,000 prize awarded to each episode winner, among the three teams competing, in a special Halloween show held at Pennsylvania’s Hersheypark, a theme park, shot after hours.
“It really was Hershey’s after dark,” said McBride, who currently works as a cake artist in Sea Island, Georgia. “It filmed overnight, so we were up at 2 in the morning roaming around the park, which was kind of a childhood dream come true. But that kind of just adds to the adrenaline and craziness.”
The episode’s description details how the contestants must race through the park to find the Candy Clue during the competition that sees them creating showstopping pieces, all under a time crunch.
“A sculpture like that should take days, should take weeks,” said Velasquez, who currently is a project manager for Clark Food Services. “There was not enough time. So you’re always rushing ... it’s not like it is in a hotel or anywhere else where you have all the time in the world to put out this perfect piece. This is like the worst day of your life when everything fell apart, and you suddenly have to remake a bride’s wedding cake in three hours. It’s like that, just on national television.”
In addition to the cash prize for the winning team, they’ll also receive a year’s supply of chocolate and a vacation in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Teaching is her greatest joy
For Velasquez, each time she gets onto a show, it gives her the chance to help inspire someone younger and locally the idea that they can one day do it, too. Working with McBride is just icing on the cake.
“Bringing her with me is literally the greatest joy of my career,” Velasquez said. “I’ve known her since she was a kid. I’ve trained her, her whole life and I don’t even care that I was there. I’m so much more proud that she’s there, that she’s handling it and she’s amazing.”
McBride said she was a sweet tooth kid and always liked painting and art. So blending the two together in the world of cake artistry and pastries was a perfect match. After getting cake decorating lessons from Velasquez, she worked for her at Velasquez’s Pastries by Design in Lakewood Ranch and alongside her as a pastry supervisor at The Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota.
“More than half my life now, (Lyndsy’s) been teaching me cake,” McBride said.
Velasquez, a mother of three, grew up in her family’s restaurant, attended culinary school and pastry school and later worked as executive pastry chef at the Ritz Carlton. She said her mother, Debbie Bivona, used to make all her birthday cakes when she was a kid and she picked up on it.
And on Monday, those skills — along with McBride’s talent — are on display in a unique Halloween chocolate show.
Neither the pastry duo nor the Food Network would disclose the outcome of the competition.
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 3:19 PM.
