Gesine Bullock-Prado’s career has been varied and full of excitement. After graduating from Southwestern Law School, she joined her sister Sandra’s production company, Fortis Films, in 1995. The siblings worked together to produce films such as “Practical Magic,” “Miss Congeniality,” “Gun Shy,” and “Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous.” Sandra played the leading lady and Gesine worked behind the scenes as the company’s lawyer and president.
After nearly a decade in the film industry, Bullock-Prado left Hollywood to pursue her pastoral dreams as a baker in an environment that is in every way the antithesis of Los Angeles: Vermont. She owned a bakery in Montpelier from 2005 to 2008, and is currently a pastry instructor at a school in Hartford she founded called Sugar Glider Kitchen. She also works as an instructor for the King Arthur Flour Company’s kitchen.
Though she traded in palm trees for lindens, she still has a presence on television. Recently, she judged the Food Network show “Best Baker in America.” Many Food Network shows bring together hopeful chefs or regional up-and-comers to compete against each other for a nominal prize or for the honor of beating a celebrity chef. “Best Baker in America,” however, takes only the best of the best, and pits well-known names against each other.
“It really stinks to have to let people go. It really stinks when people don’t have their best day,” said Bullock-Prado. When she’s not judging fellow chefs on the beauty of their merengue, she’s baking up a storm in her 18th-century Vermont farmhouse, where she films her other Food Network show, “Baked in Vermont.” She also occasionally appears as a judge on “Christmas Cookie Challenge,” “Beat Bobby Flay,” and “Worst Cooks.”
Bullock-Prado has also somehow found the time to write. She has several cookbooks under her belt, including “Sugar Baby” (2011), “Pie It Forward” (2012), “Bake It Like You Mean It” (2013), “Let Them Eat Cake” (2016), and “Fantastical Cakes” (2018). This year she wrote her memoirs, “Confections of a Closet Master Baker,” which she dedicated to her mother.