The Foods Network experienced referred to as her prior to.
This time, Marilyn Santos-McNabb honored the offer.
A semiretired government pastry chef staying on at the Hilton Chicago/Northbrook for the holiday seasons, Santos-McNabb is a admirer beloved on Season 8 of the Food items Network’s “Holiday Baking Championship,” hosted by previous NFL player and foreseeable future host of “The Bachelor,” Jesse Palmer.
If she outlasts 11 other rivals in the actuality collection, she designs to put the $25,000 winnings toward her retirement.
If retirement at any time actually occurs.
“My friends say I am busier than at any time,” stated Santos-McNabb, married and residing on a wooded whole lot in West Chicago with chickens, fruit trees, a perennial shade backyard and a significant vegetable back garden.
“You identify it, I have it. I’m form of like a plant collector,” she claimed.
A indigenous of Malabon in close proximity to Manilla in the Philippines, she was a pastry chef instructor for nearly 11 decades at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago’s Le Cordon Bleu Plan.

























Whilst there, she designed an 8-foot-long cake for President Barack Obama of his loved ones puppy, Bo. Her gingerbread White Dwelling creations had been exhibited in the Museum of Science and Industry’s yearly “Xmas All around the World” exhibit.
Items like this, specialties in petit fours and cake decoration and the use of colourful substances in her baking, drew see from the Food Network.
“When I was performing at Le Cordon Bleu, I would been asked a few situations and I usually explained no simply because I just didn’t sense like I was special, you know? I just imagined I do what I do,” Santos-McNabb mentioned.
“But simply because I was retiring and then due to the fact it was variety of slow throughout the pandemic, I informed them initially, ‘Let me believe about it.’
“A week later someone checked in once again. I mentioned, ‘OK, I will do it.’ I imagined, I seriously wished to encounter it, and I seriously just needed to have entertaining.”
Even though she approximated she’s about 20 years more mature than the next-oldest competitor and 40 a long time more mature than the rest, she’s struck a chord on the demonstrate, which airs regionally at 7 p.m. Monday and streams on discovery+.
Santos-McNabb is great television.
“My deal with can’t lie, so I have so quite a few facial expressions and men and women consider I am amusing,” she stated.
In one particular episode, she got serious with a cranky butter churner, the only solution remaining just after swifter contestants chose significantly less balky suggests to make their butter.
“You need to see my encounter when I have to churn butter,” she reported.
In an early episode Santos-McNabb prevented a doomsday moment with “Getaway Baking Championship” judges Nancy Fuller, Duff Goldman and Carla Corridor when she bewildered the container of apple cider vinegar for straight apple cider even though making doughnuts. She sniffed out the faux pas and, in a pro move, neutralized the vinegar with baking soda.
It worked. The judges loved her doughnuts, and were none-the-wiser to the apple cider/apple cider vinegar blend-up.
In truth, the judges have complimented her flavors, with Goldman telling her at one issue “You know flavors, Alright?”
“If someone wishes to do it, you actually have to know your things, you seriously have to know your recipes, and you really must be physically effectively-equipped simply because you do a great deal of working,” Santos-McNabb mentioned.
“The clock does not stop. If you have two several hours to do it, you have two several hours to do it. The digicam is always on you and you run for your substances, you operate for the oven. By like the fourth week my legs were being cramping, due to the fact I am outdated and small.”
What satisfies her the most is the pleasure she’s brought to a throughout the world audience. Pleasant fans send her Instagram messages, notify her about their exhibit look at get-togethers. Her recipe for environmentally friendly tomato mincemeat pie is a strike on social media, she said.
“I acquired a message from my cousin in Texas,” she explained. “He was stating, ‘Do you know you might be on the advert for discovery+?'”
Such acclaim caps a many years-extended profession and interest in foods since she was a very little female in Malabon, playing with fireplace and crude creations.
“I would minimize up hibiscus leaves and cook dinner them in the clay pots. Not knowing what fate is about,” Santos-McNabb stated.
However she analyzed maritime biology in school and later labored for a pharmacological enterprise in the Philippines, her coronary heart was usually in the kitchen. At 22 Santos-McNabb owned her have bakery, Marilyn’s, and in 1983 at age 27, left property to research foods service at the Higher education of DuPage in Glen Ellyn.
Soon after a quick stint as pastry chef at the Lisle Hilton, Santos-McNabb ran her individual put in Glendale Heights, Basic & Fancy Bakeshop, for 10 years right up until she was diagnosed with breast most cancers. She’s been cancer-absolutely free for 21 years.
She’s baked in corporate kitchens, such as Mesn Sabika in Naperville and at Wheaton College’s Caf Bon Apptit.
Santos-McNabb joined Hilton Northbrook in 2014, and however she technically retired in August, she’s stayed on all through the vacations and will make desserts and wedding cakes for equally its places to eat, Allgauer’s and Frank’s Area. She will also do the job “Breakfast with Santa” on the to start with 3 Saturdays in December, and Christmas and New Year’s brunches.
It is really a extended way from Malabon.
“I truly believe that if you do some thing you have to follow by,” Santos-McNabb reported. “If you’re effortlessly upset, then you might be not going to be successful. But if you abide by by way of, then you will triumph.”
