Holiday Baking Championship Season 11: Recap, Bakes and Winner

Spoiler note: this recap names the Season 11 winner and covers how the season played out.

Season 11 broke new ground for the franchise. Steven Levitt, a home baker from Aurora, Ontario, became the first Holiday Baking Championship winner from outside the United States, a milestone that reflects how much wider the show's casting net had grown by its eleventh year on the air. The full season by season record lives on our Holiday Baking Championship show hub.

Season 11 at a glance

The finalists

Steven Levitt, a home baker from Aurora, Ontario, Canada, won the season with a gingerbread cake as his final showstopper bake. The runners-up, all listed as co-finalists, were Jer Barrios of Carson City, Nevada, Rolf Runkel of Calgary, Alberta, Rafi Dekrmnjian of Northridge, California, and Natasha Aschoff of Plymouth, Massachusetts, a finalist field spanning two countries.

How a Holiday Baking Championship episode works

The two-round format was unchanged this season: a preheat challenge opens each episode and tests a narrower skill, and a bigger, holiday-themed main heat closes it out and decides who is eliminated. Bakers work against the clock in a shared studio kitchen, with the judges tasting and critiquing every dish before sending someone home each week, the same structure that has run through every season of the franchise since 2014.

Notable moments of Season 11

Steven Levitt's win is the headline story of this season. He is the first champion in Holiday Baking Championship history to come from outside the United States, taking the title back to Ontario. He was already known to baking competition audiences before this win, having been a two-time finalist on The Great Canadian Baking Show, which made him one of the more experienced competitors to ever appear on this particular franchise.

This was also Carla Hall's final season on the judging panel after a five-season run that began in Season 7; Kardea Brown would take over the third chair the following year, closing out one era of the show's judging lineup as it opened another.

What was at stake

The show's cash prize, reported at $50,000 in earlier seasons, remained the central reward on top of the title, and it now came with a genuinely international field of competitors for the first time. Steven Levitt's win took that prize across the border to Ontario, a small but real sign that the franchise's casting reach had grown well past its original US-only pool of contestants by its eleventh year.

The finalist field this season was also unusually spread out geographically, with runners-up based in Nevada, Alberta, California, and Massachusetts alongside the Canadian winner, a wider map than most seasons of this franchise have drawn from.

Where to watch and what to read next

Season 11 is generally available to stream on Discovery+ and Max, alongside periodic reruns on Food Network's own broadcast schedule. The complete champion list across all twelve seasons is in our Holiday Baking Championship winners roundup, which also covers the current host and judging lineup in full. Season 10 came before this one, and Season 12 brings in Kardea Brown as the new third judge.

Duff Goldman's long run on this franchise's judging panel is covered in our Duff Goldman profile. If Steven's gingerbread showstopper has you wanting to bake your own, a bundt pan is a reliable way to get an evenly baked, presentation-ready cake without much fuss.