Chester Bake Shop Wins ‘Cupcake Wars’

In the end, passion and creativity outweighed training and experience. Cheryl Burger, owner of the in Chester, was the only contestant not formally trained for baking beat back a former cake boss employee and two other teams to win Sunday’s installment of Cupcake Wars on the Food Network.

As winner, the Long Valley resident takes home $10,000 and had the honor of serving her cupcakes at actress Kristin Cavallari‘s baby shower.

“We are a small little shop and we can do a lot with $10,000,” Burger said. “There is equipment we can purchase now."

From the first challenge, the judges had mostly complimentary things to say about the four cupcakes Burger and Filipow made.

And the one that didn’t work?

“They didn’t like the margarita cupcake so we changed it to a coconut and lime cupcake,” Burger said. “I am here to win.”

The other winning offerings included a banana cupcake with yogurt whipped cream filling, sweet potato cream cheese frosting and white chocolate, a lemon cupcake filled with blueberry compote and topped with vanilla butter cream and drizzled with blueberry syrup and a vanilla cupcake filled with strawberries and chocolate whipped cream with strawberry buttercream icing.

“Judges loved our cupcake in the first round, but that just put a tremendous amount of pressure on us for the next round to male our cupcakes perfect,” Burger said.

While winning the money was nice, Burger said getting the word out about her shop was one of the major benefits of being on the show.

“We’re in a nice little small town and this would be great for more people to come to us and see what we do here,” Burger said.

And now, residents of Chester and nearby towns need only come to main street to sample the same cupcakes that pleased the judges palletes.

“I knew we could win because I know we serve delicious cupcakes every single day.” Burger said.

Look for our complete conversation with Cheryl Burger this week on Patch.