Feed Your Tree • Food lovers

THIS IS

Food Network’s newest baking competition, Candy Land, is a real-life version of the game— and the set is totally edible!

food Network takes its competitions seriously, but the newest baking show, Candy Land, is all fun and games: The network teamed up with Hasbro, the company that makes Candy Land, to create life-size edible replicas of the board game’s iconic lands including Gumdrop Mountains, Peppermint Forest and Lollipop Woods. Competitors create cakes inspired by each spot—and they pull their ingredients directly from the set! Filming a show like this was a dream come true, says host Kristin Chenoweth, but it also came with challenges: An actual chocolate river flowed through Chocolate Mountain, “and I may or may not have stepped in it... in Manolo Blahnik heels,” she says. Here’s how the show came together. —Jessica Dodell-Feder

seeing is believing

The competitors “freaked out” when they walked onto the set, says Kristin of the 20 sugar and cake artists on the show. “Seeing it for the first time, one of the competitors started crying, then laughing. She couldn’t believe it.” Host Kristin Chenoweth

sugar rush The initial candy order for the show included more than 150 types of sweets, weighing more than 650 pounds! In the mix: giant lollipops, gumdrops, sprinkles, peppermints, caramels, gumballs and blocks of chocolate.

Thinking big

Many of the larger structures were sculpted from rice cereal treats, plus modeling chocolate, fondant and buttercream. Melted chocolate held everything together.

baked fresh

The set contained so many treats that a dedicated culinary team baked fresh cookies and made homemade marshmallows for every episode. You can see their handiwork on the gingerbread house near Chocolate Mountain.

snack break

Kristin admits that she spent many of her breaks nibbling on the treats that covered the set. “Instead of eating lunch, I would find myself reaching for the trees from Lollipop Woods— which were cotton candy!—and then I’d be bouncing off the walls. Going to sleep at night was hard because I was eating so much sugar,” she says.

Catch Candy Land on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.