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Food Network 'Sugar' Dress Victory Earns Plainfield Chef $10,000 Prize

Andy Chlebana, a bakery and pastry instructor at Joliet Junior College, said he'll be using the cash to take his family on a vacation.

Nothing like a bit of nail-biting stress to end your holiday weekend, but with happy results: Pastry chef Andy Chlebana proved the one to beat Sunday night in the "Sugar Fashion" competition on "Food Network Challenge."

The Plainfield resident went home $10,000 richer and his family -- wife Heather, 8-year-old twins Abigail and Annabel, and sons Andy, 7, and Adler, 3 -- will be going on a pretty nice vacation this summer.

"I can't believe we won this. I'm just really blown away and totally in shock right now," Chlebana said on the show, in which his "Kaleidoscope" dress -- made entirely of sugar built on a corset of chicken wire and tulle -- was deemed the best of the four in the competition.

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Each "sugar artist" had seven hours to make the "dress" in a Denver kitchen and then one hour to transport it across town and install it in a downtown Denver store window.

One of Chlebana's competitors, Susun Notter, an instructor at the Pennsylvania School of Culinary Arts, actually taught Chlebana when he was just starting out, he said. Another, Louise Chien, a pastry chef from Orange, Calif., competed on five previous shows, coming in second each time.

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In the end, it was a little forethought and engineering that made the difference. Chlebana's assistant, Heather Schreiner, with whom he works at Joliet Junior College, asked her father to make a special box in which the dress could be suspended for transportation. Chlebana also designed his creation so that if pieces broke off in transport, they would either fall "into" the dress or could be replaced on site, he said.

While Chlebana and Schreiner finished their dress first and were the first team to install their work in the window, it wasn't clear that victory would be theirs given the comments of one judge, award-winning pastry chef Keegan Gerhard.

"You are the only person who decided to get the bulk of the work done on the dress and transport it essentially finished," Gerhard said. "But I think your sugar work was pretty simplistic. ... You made very clever decisions but at the end of the day, I would have liked to have seen a wider variety of techniques."

Chlebana said on the show that Gerhard's criticism "hurt a little," and he was fairly certain he'd lost after that judgment.

So it was a sweet surprise that in the end, victory -- and the $10,000 prize -- ended up his.

"Now I'm really going to take my family on that vacation," he said.

 

This story was published Friday, before we knew the outcome of the contest ...

Cue the "Mission: Impossible" music: "Bum, bum, bum-bum, bum, bum..."

"Good morning, Chef Chlebana. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a 'tres chic' couture dress -- complete with accessories -- in just seven hours. Your only ingredient: sugar. You'll have just one hour to transport it across town and set it up on a mannequin in a department store window. Your reward, should you succeed, $10,000."

Did Chef Andy Chlebana, a Plainfield resident and baking/pastry instructor at Joliet Junior College, complete his mission? He did, indeed. But if you want to find out if he took home the $10,000 prize, you'll have to watch the "Food Network Challenge" show at 7 p.m. Sunday.

Chlebana, 35, was one of four "sugar artists" chosen to compete on the program, which every week presents culinary experts with seemingly impossible tasks in which the winner collects a cash reward.

The show taped in Denver the week prior to Thanksgiving, and he was given just a few weeks' notice as to what challenge he'd be asked to undertake. He was allowed to work with his assistant, Heather Schreiner, and to bring his own baking equipment and whatever supplies he would need, he said.

Although Chlebana is prohibited from saying whether he won, there are no limitations on talking about what all it took to create what he calls a "kaleidoscope" dress made up of multiple bright colors.

"I can tell you that it's short and backless," he said, laughing. "(I had to) get in touch with my feminine side. It's a very sexy dress."

He was allowed to build it on top of a corset-style foundation, but otherwise the size 0 gown is made out of nothing but sugar, including some that was melted into a clear lollipop-style glaze and some made in a process similar to glass-blowing, he said. It's completely edible, as are the bracelet, necklace and other accessories he designed to complete the ensemble for "Agnes," the name his JJC students gave his model, er, mannequin.

"We did a test to see how it would look on a small section of the dress and if we could do it in such a small amount of time," Chlebana said.

Chlebana was up against one television newcomer like himself and two pastry chefs who have appeared on the Food Network show previously, including the woman who was his instructor and mentor when he was learning how to work with sugar, he said.

"When I saw her name on the list ... I thought, this is going to be tough," he said. "But it was really fun to go up against her."

Chlebana, who's married and has four children ranging in age from 3 to 8, said he's competed in sugar and baking events before and he's attempted to land spots on cooking shows previously, but without success. It was an old roommate who nominated him for this one, and the show's producers asked to supply photos of his work as well as an audition tape, which he made with the assistance of his students.

In it, he's tied to a chair and "forced" to talk about himself and his skills (see the video that accompanies this story).

In the contest, competitors had just seven hours to put together their creation. The bigger challenge, however, was how to transport it across town and then assemble it in a downtown Denver store window -- all in one hour, Chlebana said.

They ended up building the dress in pieces, the largest of which went into a box made for the occasion by assistant Schreiner's father. There were a few problems -- "Sugar doesn't bend," he said -- but nothing that couldn't be repaired.

Chlebana said he's glad the show is finally going to air because it's been tough keeping the secret on whether or not he won.

"We've been waiting and waiting," he said, with a laugh.


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