Christina Ledesma, aka “The Retro Cookie Lady” from Fremont, was sure she bombed her phone interview for the Food Network’s Halloween Cookie Challenge.

“The associate producer asked me why I loved Halloween. My response was because of all the memories with my mom growing up,” Ledesma recalls. “I immediately started crying. My mom was a single parent and seeing all the effort she put into the holidays made me appreciate her so much.”

It turned out the producer liked that answer. This Monday at 7 p.m., Ledesma will be competing for a $10,000 prize on the Halloween Cookie Challenge’s fifth episode of Season 2, “Halloween Stained Glass and Halloween Funhouse.” She’ll be making spooky cookie creations, like a 15-inch long haunted house and a translucent glasslike cookie. Tuning in will be her mother, her husband, her four daughters and her son.

“My mom is very excited, to say the least,” she says. “And my nine-year-old daughter has been going around telling her teachers and principal. I’m like, ‘Sophia, you got to stop because they’re probably tired of hearing about it!’”

Ledesma got into baking right before the pandemic, after seeing neat cookies at a party and thinking, “Hey, I can do this!” Her specialty is vanilla-sugar cookies decorated with royal icing. Her clients have asked for wedding cookies, zombie cookies and 49ers-themed cookies – “literally anything you can think of, I can design it,” she says.

When she’s not baking, Ledesma is pursuing a degree in psychology at San Jose State University. It turns out quite a lot of psychology goes into baking.

“When I’m creating cookies, it’s extremely therapeutic to me,” she says. “It’s almost like when people play with their little sand (zen gardens), raking them and doing it to relax. As a psychology major, we learn about something called artistic therapy, activities that help us cope with everyday stresses. With school and the kids and running a business, it’s been stressful lately – but in a good way, constructive stress.”

Ledesma never thought she’d actually make it on TV – “I’m my own worst critic” – but once on set, she had quite the exciting time. Her fellow contestants hailed from Texas, Canada and the Bay Area (Karl Fong aka The Pastry Ninja). She won’t say who won the cookie competition – folks will just have to tune in – but says she’d easily do it again.

“It was insane. Unreal. Even now, it seems so surreal being on set and seeing all the tech people and sound and lighting guys. And (host) Duff Goldman, too. The only opportunity I wish I took was to hug him.”