'Oh, the places you'll go': Jacksonville pastry chef on Seuss-inspired baking show

Rebecca Reed is no stranger to pressure. She’s the executive pastry chef for three Jacksonville restaurants, overseeing a crew that’s responsible for sweets and confections for thousands of diners.

She’s also no stranger to competition, having won the Food Network competition show “Chopped: Sweets” in 2020.

But it was Reed’s young daughter who made her the ideal candidate when producers of a new Prime Video baking competition show “Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge” came calling.

“I literally read Dr. Seuss books every day,” Reed said last week, sitting in the dining room at Bellwether, one of three Jacksonville restaurants Reed works with. She splits time between Bellwether in downtown Jacksonville, Restaurant Orsay in Avondale and Black Sheep in Five Points.

The show, which filmed in Los Angeles and will be released Tuesday on Prime Video, pits nine teams of bakers against each other, creating elaborate deserts based on whimsical Seuss classics, with a $50,000 grand prize on the line.

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Reed was paired with Ashley Ball, a stay-at-home mom and cake sculptor from Rock Springs, Ga. The two had never met before the competition but their skill sets complemented each other, Reed said. Ball built the elaborate structures required to keep the creations from falling apart, while Reed used her baking and organizational skills to keep things on track.

Reed is careful to avoid giving any hints about how well her Team Teal did in the competition. Prime is releasing the entire series at once, so people can binge-watch the show and find out, but Reed isn’t giving out any spoilers, other than to say one of her team’s creations was inspired by Seuss’ “Oh, The Places You’ll Go.”

Reed didn’t originally intend to become a pastry chef; she wanted to be a marriage counselor. But after attending Wingate University, she figured out that counseling really wasn’t her calling.

“I realized I have this heart for making people happy and bringing people joy,” she said. “Seeing people on their worst days was just not for me.”

So she went to culinary school and moved to Jacksonville in 2013. In 2019, she filled out a general application for the Food Network and soon found herself on “Chopped.”

“I realized what that could do for my career and how fun it is,” she said. “It’s just such an adventure.”

The Dr. Seuss show was just a perfect opportunity, even if it meant spending time away from her family and her restaurants.

“As a chef, I want my daughter to try new foods,” she said. “It’s just like ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’ It really, really fit into my life.”

The teams created “dessert mosaics,” which could include cakes, candies and all forms of pastry. They were judged on the visuals of their creations, how well they told the story and, of course, how they tasted.

“A lot went into the design of these things that I didn’t realize until we had to create them all,” Reed said. “It definitely stretched me and forced me to grow.”

That doesn’t mean you’re likely to find Green Eggs and Ham on the menu at Bellwether any time soon, but Reed said she’ll probably offer a few Seuss-inspired treats when the show is released.

Reed said she has a passion for teaching people that the kitchen doesn’t need to be a scary place, and the competition shows are perfect for doing that. Teams on the Seuss competition were able to post their recipes online, giving her a huge new audience for her ideas.

“Do you know how many people have Prime Video?” she said. “They can click on your recipe and make it.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Prime Video's Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge features Jacksonville chef