Meet The Artist
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Meet The Artist *
Food Network Star & Judge Chef Vanessa Greeley Creates Gingerbread House to be Raffled off at the WHS Great Warwick Cookie Exchange
By Jennifer O’Connor
Food Network star and judge, Chef Vanessa Greeley, is creating an exclusive, custom-made gingerbread house to be raffled off at the Warwick Historical Society’s Great Warwick Cookie Exchange 2025 on Dec. 7 at the Buckbee Events Center. One lucky guest will take home this amazing holiday showpiece. To learn more about Chef’s Greeley and her creative process, she invited me to her studio in Warwick for a Q&A style interview.
JENNIFER O’CONNOR: You have competed on TV and have been featured on WEtv’s Wedding Cake Wars and on Food Network’s top competition shows: Halloween Wars, Holiday Wars, Cake Wars, Sugar Dome, The Big Bake in Canada, Gingerbread Giants and Food Network Challenge. Was it your childhood dream to become a baker and create masterpieces with cakes, chocolate, sugar, and gingerbread?
VANESSA GREELEY : No, never! My story is actually a little long but I’ll try to make it short. I used to work as a senior systems analyst at a Swiss and French bank for many years. I was a project manager and I worked with computers. That is until I got hit with Stage 4 uterine cancer. This was in the year 2000. I was 33 years old. I went through rounds of chemo, surgeries, and radiation treatment. I was sort of like a guinea pig at the time for a cocktail of medicine that is used today and was very successful for me. I was supposed to be dead. And that was 25 years ago. I still suffer from the aftermath of all the treatments. My brain was totally fried. I had problems with my memory, and processing words and phrases. I couldn’t remember words in Spanish or English. I speak Spanish having been born in Lima, Peru.
Greeley working on her gingerbread creation for the WHS.
Greeley (center) has competed and been featured on many baking competition shows.
GREELEY : Oh yeah! I loved computers and my job. My performance reviews were excellent. After I had the cancer treatments, all of a sudden everything I knew was lost and my performance wasn’t the same. It was like somebody pulled a rug from under my feet. I didn’t know who I was or what I was going to do. It was awful and I was becoming very depressed.
O’CONNOR: I’m so sorry to hear this. Was it very difficult and frustrating for you when you went back to work?
GREELEY : I received a tremendous amount of support from my husband, Michael, daughter, Michelle, who was only four years old at the time, and wonderful friends and family. Michael even shaved his head when I lost my hair during the treatments. I couldn’t have gotten through it without Michael. A pivotal moment for me was when I was recovering from multiple surgeries and had a really bad fall. I was lying on my couch thinking, “I can’t believe that this happened to me,” as I was watching TV and came across the Food Network Channel. I remember watching Marina Sousa in a birthday cake competition that she won. And I was flabbergasted because I had no idea that you could make cakes like she did. This was like a sculpture. She made a teddy bear and toys with cake. It was so fun and whimsy, and I fell in love with it. I gained an interest and started taking cake decorating and baking classes at Wilton. When I started taking classes, I felt alive again and my creative side exploded. I then attended and graduated from the French Culinary Institute and became a Pastry Chef.
O’CONNOR: You eventually found your way out of the depression. Can you tell us how you did that?
GREELEY : The program was intense and very strict. I took the classically trained French Pastry courses. Most of the students were younger than me. For many of the students, it was second nature to them because they grew up baking with their parents and grandparents. I had zero experience and it was noticeable. I had to learn techniques in French and I was struggling with my memory, but for some reason I still enjoyed it. I loved the challenge and I really wanted to accomplish something new. I learned so much at FCI. For one of my tests, I made a giraffe sculpture with his tongue sticking out. I was so proud of it and I thought I would get a good grade. I couldn’t believe that I only got an 80. Another student made a rubber duck sitting on top of a fence and she got a 95. I thought the instructor, Chef Kir, a chocolatier, hated my guts. It turned out not to be the case and later we became wonderful friends. He took me aside to check out the duck and he explained to me how beautifully tempered her chocolate was and how I needed to improve my technical skills.
O’CONNOR: What was the experience like attending the French Culinary Institute?
“When I started taking classes, I felt alive again and my creative side exploded.”
O’CONNOR: When did your baking career take you from watching the Food Network Channel to being on the channel?
GREELEY : I started entering cake competitions. At a National competition in Virginia, I won the “Best in Show” for my jewelry box cake, and I beat the Masters – something totally unexpected! What’s more - this really got me noticed by the cake decorating community and it came at a good time. Just around this period, the Food Network was looking for new talent. They read about me winning the competition in a local newspaper. When I returned home, I got a phone call from them and I thought it was a prank so I hung up. The producer called me back and said it wasn’t a prank and invited me to be on the show the Food Network Challenge.
O’CONNOR: This must have been such a surreal experience for you, can you tell us more about it?
GREELEY : I was so excited. I started screaming and the show’s producer put me on speaker phone for everybody to hear me screaming. The episode is titled “Chocolate Myths.” For the challenge, I needed an assistant to help me. And guess who, I asked? It was my French Culinary Institute instructor, Chef Kir. He came on the show with me. There’s a nice dynamic between us and we worked well together. We wanted to make a giant Phoenix but the wing broke so we called it Phoenix Junior. Even though it didn’t go the way we wanted it to we always had a positive attitude.
O’CONNOR: You were once a student and now you are a teacher with your own business, Vanessa’s Cake Designs. How do you like teaching?
GREELEY : I love to do things to try to inspire people, but at the same time I like to teach because I learn from my students as well. People who take my classes come from all over the world. Some are professionals who have years of experience in different mediums and levels. The amount of information and tips you can get from your students is very valuable. For example, I learned a trick from one of my students about a flavor she uses in her sugar cookie. It’s a tradition in her family that has been passed down through the generations. I value and treasure that very much. Also, I’m so glad that I can teach my students something as well.
Greeley (center) has worked with many celebrated TV culinary personalities.
O’CONNOR : Is there a favorite tip or technique that you came up with that you enjoy sharing with others?
GREELEY : In 2014, I came up with a technique of dipping a water balloon in sugar to create a sphere. I put this in an instructional video on YouTube. Now it’s widely used. I get zero credit, but it’s okay, I don’t care. I shared it because I wanted people to not be afraid of working with sugar. You have to be technical and do a lot of practice by experimenting. I wanted to come up with a technique that is easy enough for anyone to do so they can still produce something a little bit impressive.
O’CONNOR : When you present these amazing sugar and cake creations and you see the responses and reactions from people who are in awe, how does that make you feel?
GREELEY : It’s very fulfilling and rewarding. I like seeing people smile and making them happy. And hopefully I will inspire people. When I was judging a competition in Virginia there was a nine-year-old girl who was so excited to meet me. She said, “I want to show you something.” After watching my video on my balloon technique, she used the technique to create an hourglass with sugar and sanding sugar. It was such a huge compliment that she knew that I did it, and very clever that this kid made an hourglass. I feel honored seeing somebody utilizing the technique and doing something unique and special with it.
Vanessa working on the gingerbread creation to be auctioned off at the WHS Great Warwick Cookie Exchange on December 7th.
O’CONNOR : Can you share with us what the process is like to make a gingerbread house, especially at a competition level?
GREELEY : The gingerbread house I made for a national competition at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC took me about 600 hours. Those hours paid off though, because I landed in the top 10 in my first Nationals (and it was Food Network!). I learned a lot by entering the competition. The gingerbread crowd takes these competitions seriously. They are a tight knit community. I got humbled very quickly and I learned a lot from the experience. About the process, first I sketch the house. I get my inspiration for my design from artwork by Daniel Merriam. He’s an amazing artist. After I draw the house then I put it on a foam core board and assemble it. I look for any technical errors and I fix them. There’s a lot of thought going into the design. I also get help and advice from Beatriz Muller. She’s my friend, mentor and an award-winning gingerbread master. Another friend who I pick her brain with structural questions is Gloria Baca. She’s an architect. They are both essential to my gingerbread projects.
O’CONNOR : Why did you want to create a gingerbread house as a raffle to benefit the Warwick Historical Society?
GREELEY: I love what the Warwick Historical Society does for the community. I volunteered at the Society’s Haunted Halloween event. It was amazing. The production was incredible. While at the event, I noticed a flyer about the Great Cookie Exchange and I wanted to contribute to the fundraiser. I have a desire to do something for my town and to pay it forward. I remember when Covid hit all businesses hard, mine included, and the Warwick community had my back, and I was able to keep going. I won’t ever forget that, so I look for ways to make a little contribution to my town. I am excited to make the gingerbread house.
Vanessa in her judge element.
“It’s very fulfilling and rewarding. I like seeing people smile and making them happy—and hopefully I will inspire people.”
Jennifer O'Connor is a journalist and longtime Warwick resident, where she lives with her family. She is currently on the Warwick Historical Society Board of Directors where she also served as the president.
