C orinna Maguire is at home in Oranmore , Co Galway, surrounded by a prison gate, a five foot anchor, some kraken tentacles and a ship’s wheel. All of these props are edible creations, in what is just a regular part of life as a cake artist and sugar sculptor, preparing for an exhibition next week.
Maguire has been making cakes in the Galway town for 17 years, but it wasn’t until she won the popular Netflix series Is It Cake? Halloween (released on October 9th), that some locals realised her talents.
“I live across from a shop and the owner didn’t even know that I made cakes. I’m like, ‘But I’m in here all the time, collecting the flour that I forgot to buy.’
“There’s a bit of a buzz around the town for sure,” Maguire says bashfully.
She describes the Netflix series as “the pinnacle”, the “golden goose” for her as a cake artist. “It’s this challenge that every cake artist wants to try to do. So I threw my name in the hat, went through a series of interviews and managed to get into it.”
[ Is it cake? Do not show your worst child this programme! They already suspect everything is cake Opens in new window ]
For the uninitiated, the US show brings specialist bakers together to replicate objects, taking whole days to create them. And, as the name suggests, judges have to guess which object is real and which is cake. The Is it Cake? series is regularly among the most-watched shows on the streaming platform, and this three-episode seasonal spin off also reached the Netflix top 10, racking up millions of views.
Maguire’s winning creation for the Halloween-themed finale was a zombie emerging from a grave. The flavour was her children’s favourite, a dirty chai cake. Judges described Maguire’s bake as “next level” for both the intricate detail and the taste.
Taking part in the show wasn’t really about getting lots of new orders for her business, Lovin from the Oven or the $50,000 prize: “It was more just, ‘Is this possible, can I do this?’ And I did.” The programme is the “Disneyland Olympics” because it was both great fun and a huge challenge.
The episodes were filmed 15 months ago and Maguire had to keep news of her win under wraps. “I had to tell a select few, because there was no way I could keep that to myself for that long.”
Announcing the winner, host Mikey Day called her the Pride of Oranmore [to screams from her watch party in the local pub]. And throughout the series Maguire was described as ‘Corinna from Oranmore, Ireland’ putting the town of 6,000 in the spotlight.
She says that when Day asked her where she was from, she initially said, for simplicity, Galway. But when he pronounced it Gaaalwaaay she changed to Oranmore. “He could pronounce that. But I’m actually happier that it is,” she says.
Maguire has been living in Oranmore for almost two decades, but her route to making a life in the coastal town as a cake artist has involved crossing international boundaries and pushing personal ones.
Her family of six, the McGarrigles lived in Arklow, Co Wicklow , when the 1980s recession hit. The factory where her chemical engineer father worked closed down and there was no other employment. He had two job offers, one in Canada and one in Australia, and chose Alberta, drawn to the idea of the Rocky Mountains.
Growing up in Canada, Maguire kept in touch with Ireland through music, evidenced by her few steps of Irish dancing in the Is it Cake? final. Her Strabane father had been a crooner touring with showbands and her mother was a…