A Palmerton graduate will appear tonight on the season premiere of a new baking competition series.

Natalie “Nattie J” Collins-Fish, a Palmerton Area High School Class of 2004 graduate, will compete on “Crime Scene Kitchen” with Joel McHale. The first of nine episodes is at 9 p.m. on Fox.

“Crime Scene Kitchen” is a culinary guessing game where bakers are tasked with decoding what type of dessert was made, when all that’s left are the crumbs, flour trails and a few elusive clues.

They must then re-create the recipe for celebrity judges, chef Curtis Stone and cake artist Yolanda Gampp, who will determine how closely their sweet treat matches the missing dessert, and how good it tastes.

Each episode begins at the scene of the crime - a kitchen that was just used to make an amazing mouthwatering dessert that has since disappeared.

The chef teams of two are challenged to scour the kitchen for clues and ingredients to figure out what was baked. Next, each team must duplicate the recipe based on their guess.

To take the $100,000 prize, the competing dessert makers will need to prove they have the technical know-how, imagination and problem-solving skills needed to decode and re-create incredible desserts and cakes from across the world.

Selected for the show

After high school, Collins-Fish attended culinary school in upstate New York, where she graduated in 2006. She has lived in Las Vegas since August 2006.

For Collins-Fish, a custom cake artist, the show was the perfect opportunity, as she owns her custom cake business, Cake Lyfe by Nattie J in Las Vegas.

“Right now, I’m established at home,” Collins-Fish said. “I’m looking to open my own shop here (in Las Vegas).”

Collins-Fish explained how she was selected to compete on the show.

“I was found by a casting (company) who DM’d me on my Instagram page and asked me if I would be interested in possibly being on a show, and if I had an assistant to bring with me with pastry experience as well,” Collins-Fish said.

She asked her friend Luis Flores if he would be up for it.

“Of course he was.”

Collins-Fish said the interview process went quickly. They were contacted Feb. 11, and left for Los Angeles the beginning of April.

“It was definitely really a great experience, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said. “It was kind of like a whirlwind, it happened so fast, a super-quick turnaround.”

Collins-Fish said they went through different interviews with people from the casting company, and had to send in different pictures of their work.

“They called us and let us know we made it,” she said. “It was super exciting, but we were also like really nervous.”

Collins-Fish said that on the first episode, there are 12 teams, with six each split up into Group A and Group B. She is in Group A, which will appear on Episodes 1, 3 and 5.

She is one of 12 competing in the premiere, which has two rounds. The first round is the Dessert Round. Those who win the first round get an advantage for the second round, which is the Showpiece round, where contestants can get eliminated, Collins-Fish said.

Ready for the challenge

Collins-Fish said she believes her experience and training will serve her well.

“I’m classically trained, so I have a lot of knowledge about traditional desserts and just a lot of different elements of dessert, what specific things are,” she said. I have a ton of experience in high-end, high-volume restaurants, and I feel like I work really, really well under pressure.

“I don’t get stressed out; I just stay focused, I don’t panic. I feel like staying calm in a situation like this is a really big advantage.”

Of course, Collins-Fish didn’t shy away from her ultimate goal.

“The goal is to win the competition, also to get my name out there,” she said. “I feel that win or lose, it’s a great opportunity to get my name out there.”

Collins-Fish said she simply plans to be herself.

“I feel like going into it, I wanted to make sure I stayed true to myself, not to put on a show or create drama,” she said. “I’m very, very unique, and one-of-a-kind, and I didn’t want to jump on a bandwagon; I’m here because I’m talented, and that’s what I want to show on TV.”

“Obviously if we win, it’s 50/50, we get 50K each,” she said. “My plan is to save a lot of that to start my own bakery, and right now make my own business better, make it more lucrative for us in the end, so that in a year or two, or in another five years, by the time I’m 40, I want to have a successful, well-established bakery.”