Karl Fong: Where Are They Now?

Spoiler note: this post confirms that Karl Fong won season five of Halloween Baking Championship.

Karl Fong won the fifth season of the Halloween Baking Championship in October 2019, a Bay Area baker from Hercules, California who took the $25,000 prize in the last season before the show expanded into its modern seven-episode form. His run gave the show one of its most distinctive champion personas: the martial-artist pastry chef.

The zombie cake

Fong clinched the title in the season finale with a zombie cake, a showpiece bake that fit a season whose theming leaned hard into the undead; coverage of his win noted the finale's zombie-apocalypse framing. Season five was judged by Carla Hall, Katie Lee, and Zac Young, with John Henson hosting, so Fong won in front of one of the transitional panels between the show's early rotating lineups and today's locked trio.

The discipline angle

Two details from his background became the story of his season. First, the training: Fong came up through the culinary program at Contra Costa College and the California Culinary Academy, proper classical grounding rather than self-teaching. Second, the martial arts: he has practiced for more than 25 years, and it became a running theme on the show, with the discipline and composure of that training credited as part of why he stayed calm through the eliminations. Competition baking rewards exactly that temperament; the clock rattles most contestants, and it visibly did not rattle him.

Cakes by Karl

Fong's professional home is his own business, Cakes by Karl, based in Vallejo, California, where he works as an executive pastry chef building custom cakes. Local press on both sides of his win, from Hercules and Vallejo outlets to his alma mater Contra Costa College, treated the championship as a community achievement, and the business remains the main place his work is visible today.

The honest picture

Beyond the business, Fong's public footprint since the win is limited: no widely documented follow-up television runs, cookbooks, or expansion into media. His post-show story is the sturdy small-business version of champion life, a trained pastry chef whose Food Network title now sits atop the resume of a working custom cake operation. Like several of the show's winners, the victory confirmed a career rather than redirecting it.

He was also the last champion of the show's first era; the following year the season grew longer and Carla Hall took over hosting duties for a season. The full line of winners before and after him is in every Halloween Baking Championship winner.