The skeleton clutched a sugar hat onto its smooth crown, a knobbly leg protruding from a thigh-high slit in its Parisian catacomb-inspired dress — a pose befitting the winner of the 2022 season of the Food Network’s “Halloween Wars.”
Tonight, four years after locking in a cash prize for San Antonio sugar expert Susana Mijares, that skeleton will emerge from the closet as Mijares and her Texas-based teammates compete as “Team Skeletons” in the latest season of Halloween-themed show.
This year’s Back From the Dead-themed competition will feature eight teams of sugar artists and pumpkin carvers who have previously appeared on the show. Mijares is entering her second appearance on the show steeled for a frightening battle.
“Before Halloween Wars, I was so scared of making bloody and scary things,” Mijares told MySA. “Now, I have this side of me that I didn’t know I had. You have to be even more prepared this season because you want to prove why you won before.”
This fall, Mijares will be joined by professional pumpkin carver Kristina Patenaude from Temple and cake expert Lily Halabi from Harker Heights.
The team will vie for the $30,000 prize against seven others, including two Texas competitors: four-time participant Cesar Barachina, who is based in Coppell, and Spring-based pumpkin carver Rebecca DeGroot.
Trained at the French culinary school Le Cordon Bleu, Mijares partnered with her husband Ignacio “Nacho” Aguirre to open Délice Chocolatier and Patisserie, which sells custom cakes in flavors that include Italian cream and blackberry, tres leches and red velvet. The far North Side bakery also offers cookies, macarons and truffles, and it jumped on the Dubai chocolate trend last year with knafeh and pistachio-stuffed chocolate tacos.
Mijares and Aguirre recently crafted a six-layer wedding cake for their daughter in the flavors chocolate and bourbon caramel and Mexican vanilla bean and raspberry.
The duo opened their first brick-and-mortar in Mexico before debuting the business in San Antonio in 2011. Since then, they have both become food show veterans, with Mijares having appeared on the Spring Baking Championship, Best Baker in America and Holiday Wars, and Aguirre having cooked in and hosted competitions including Thanksgiving Pie Fight and Girl Scout Cookie Championship.
The couple briefly branched into savory foods with YouTube videos that walked viewers through recipes such as stuffed poblano peppers, salsa and Mexican street corn.
The two-hour season 16 premiere of “Halloween Wars” airs at 8 p.m. tonight on the Food Network. New episodes air Sunday nights and stream the next day on HBO Max.