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Meringue Bakery owner, Jen Barney, holds up a batch of her cookies and cream cow fudge that she made for her recent appearance on the Today Show’s Great American Holiday Cookie Swap.”

Three-time Food Network champion Jen Barney, owner of the Meringue Bakery & Cafe in downtown La Crosse, is once again appearing on TV screens around the nation.

She can be seen making her Cookies and Cream Cow Fudge while representing Wisconsin on The Today Show’s “The Great American Holiday Cookie Swap” show, in which bakers shared unique recipes that epitomize their state.

The show began airing this month on the streaming channel Today All Day, which is on both Today.com and Peacock, NBC’S streaming service. The show also can be seen on other places, such as YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=szdoSON-odM, with Barney’s segment from 2:30:30 to 2:34:02.

Barney told the Tribune that it was an honor to be chosen by a “Today Show” producer to represent Wisconsin.

Her husband, Brian, used multiple cameras to create the video of Barney making her fudge about a month ago in her rural Stoddard home, where Barney started her business in 2015. She moved her bakery in 2020 to its current location at 313 Main St. in downtown La Crosse.

A year ago, Barney was one of three members of Team Dough Angels, which finished first in the third season of Food Network’s “Holiday Wars” holiday cakes competition.

In 2017, she won Food Network’s “Season 4 Holiday Baking Championship.” And in 2018, she and teammate Jordan Pilarski won the network’s “Season 5 Holiday Baking Championship Homecoming Special.”

The three Food Network championships have had a major positive impact on her business, and the first two prompted her to move her bakery from her home to its larger location in La Crosse.

“It certainly doesn’t hurt,” Barney said, when asked whether her latest appearance on national television also will have a positive effect on her business. “And it was a big honor” to be selected.

“We’ve grown steadily,” Barney said of Meringue Bakery, which now usually has 18 to 20 employees. “We now have a shipping menu, and we ship every Tuesday” to customers around the country, most of whom probably learned of Meringue Bakery from watching Barney’s appearances in the Food Network competitions. “A lot of people like to send (baked goods) as gifts for the holidays,” she said.

Barney’s Cookies and Cream Cow Fudge is a mixture of white fudge and dark chocolate fudge. Barney said she came up with the recipe to celebrate Wisconsin’s dairy farmers. She designed this particular fudge to represent the black-and-white colors of Holstein cows.

“I actually had this in my head when I was going to do the first show” on Food Network, Barney said. “But there was never an opportunity to use it, so I kind of put it on the back burner” until she made the fudge for “The Great American Holiday Cookie Swap.”

Barney made a large batch of Cookies and Cream Cow Fudge that she plans to sell this weekend at her bakery. “It probably will be seasonal,” she said. “But I’ll bring it back; it’s a fun thing.”

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Meringue Bakery owner, Jen Barney, holds up a batch of her cookies and cream cow fudge that she made for her recent appearance on the Today Show’s Great American Holiday Cookie Swap.”

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