Bloomfield baker competes on Food Network show

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — A Bloomfield resident who is a professional cake baker and decorator is a contestant on the Food Network’s “Spring Baking Championship,” which is currently airing. In a March 18 interview, Jaleesa Mason said she had made it to the fourth week of competition, which was televised this past Monday, March 21, but, because of a confidentiality agreement, could not say anything more about the 10-week competition. She was, however, free to talk about her life and career.

Mason was born and raised in Spanish Harlem in New York City and attended Cathedral High School. 

“At the end of my junior year, my main focus was medicine,” she said. “I wanted to be a plastic surgeon. In junior year, on Fridays, I’d go to a hospital for an internship, and I realized plastic surgery wasn’t for me.”

Without this goal, Mason said she became worried. People told her to do what she liked, but she figured that to get ahead was not what you knew, but who you knew.

“After junior year, I decided to bite the bullet, and I got into the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park,” she said. “My mom was a single mom, and the meals were funny to say the least.”

Mason took a course in special-occasion cakes and discovered she was good at it — plus it was fun. 

“I had a steady and good eye,” she said. “There’s not so much creativity in baking — it’s in decorating.”

She said decorators have styles. 

“I do all types of styles,” she said. “My cakes are very clean. The way they look is very pleasing to the eye, well-organized and not messy. I think people like that style. It’s very refined.”

While at the culinary institute, she began to think about finding a job near where she lived.

“A French bakery came to my school during a job fair,” she said. “I started working there six months before graduation and afterwards became full-time.

Mason graduated in 2014 and was hired by Maison Kayser. For two years, she worked in Carlstadt and the Bronx. She met her future husband, Mo, at work.

“He was an executive sous-chef,” she said. “He worked right under the executive director and gave us daily production jobs. I was a pastry cook and became a chef de partie.”

She explained that as chef de partie she was in charge of her own department.

In 2016, she left Maison Kayser, became engaged and married Mo. Together they opened Mo & Jay Pastry in Essex Fells.

“2016 was a busy year,” she said with a laugh.

In 2018, the couple’s business expanded to include another bakery at the same location, Sweet Memories by Jaleesa.

In 2021, a recruiting company contacted her to ask whether she would consider entering the Food Network competition. 

“I thought it was a scam,” she said, “and left it alone.”

But the requests persisted, and Mason finally decided to find out whether they were legitimate. She discovered that the recruiters had learned about her on social media. She was asked to submit a video of herself, and three weeks later, she was flown to Nashville, Tenn., for the competition. This was in June 2021, and Mason had recently given birth to a baby girl.

“It was insane, a madhouse. I didn’t think it through. What was I going to do with the baby?” she confessed.

The competition began with 12 contestants. The grand prize is $25,000 and a write-up in Food Network Magazine. The final episode is scheduled to air on May 1.

Mason said her customers became “super excited” for her, and everything she made on TV she made in the store, too. 

“That definitely increased the foot traffic,” she said.

But the experience also changed her life.

“In episode No. 2, I had a panic attack,” she said. “And the Food Network showed it. I thought the judges would think I was a weak link. And I was worried how the public would see me because I had a business. But a lot of people have reached out and thanked me for showing my vulnerability.”

As a contestant, when Mason is announced, it is as someone from Spanish Harlem. She is proud of that.

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