Holiday Baking Championship

Bakers compete with melted snowman desserts and Christmas ice cream cakes.

In the first challenge, host Jesse Palmer asks the 10 bakers to introduce themselves with edible place cards and one-bite signature holiday desserts. The main heat is all about holiday wreath cakes and holiday ingredients.

The popularity of holiday spiced nuts inspires Jesse Palmer's challenge to the nine bakers: Use the crowd-pleasing holiday gift in spiced nut desserts. Then each baker must make three pies with different decorated crusts.

Three runners-up from previous Holiday Baking Championship competitions are back, and all they want for Christmas is a second chance to win.

Host Jesse Palmer offers tips for surviving holiday madness and shares highlights from five seasons of Holiday Baking Championship competitions.

Jesse Palmer asks the eight bakers to create a dozen kicked-up apple cider doughnuts decorated with seasonal themes. Then the competitors must transform a classic holiday yule log into a festive Thanksgiving roll cake.

In the first round, the seven bakers make baked Brie and jam mini pies. The main heat is all about being prepared for greatness as the bakers take a prepared ingredient and use it to make a crowd-pleasing Thanksgiving dessert.

The six bakers must turn panettone, the classic holiday Italian sweet bread, into an entirely new dessert. Then they're challenged to create a beautifully decorated cupcake mosaic inspired by a pair of holiday pajamas.

The five bakers create desserts that are inspired by and look like Santa Claus. Then they're tasked with making impressive cakes that look like another icy North Pole staple: an igloo.

The four remaining bakers give Hanukkah's gold-covered chocolate coins a twist by incorporating candied orange, espresso beans and more. Then they bake up cheesecakes decorated with edible shiny ice rinks.

The three bakers make a Christmas morning brunch using gingerbread, cinnamon and eggnog. Then they must create cakes that are plaid both on the inside and the outside, and one baker is crowned the winner and takes home $25,000.

The bakers create festive yule-log cakes with a Thanksgiving theme. Jason Smith is inspired to make his own roll cake with an abstract design in fall colors and creamy pumpkin filling.

The bakers use a prepared ingredient to create a Thanksgiving dessert. Jason Smith gets the sweet idea to create a layered dessert centerpiece with puff pastry and chocolate hazelnut mousse.

The bakers compete to create a "kransekake" - a Scandinavian tree-shaped tower of wreath-like cookies. Inspired, host Jason Smith uses ring-shaped cookie cutters to make a shortbread version with pistachios and dried cherries.

The bakers decorate cupcakes in a mosaic pattern to look like holiday pajamas, and Jason Smith is inspired to create orange and chocolate cupcakes topped with festive string lights.