Mallory and Jack Hannah, 2008 KU graduates, sit for an interview for “Food Network Challenge: Newlywed Cakes.” They spent three days in Denver taping interviews and the competition segment. Check Food Network for reruns of the episode.

Mallory Hannah had her cake, but she couldn’t eat it, too.

Right there, just inches away, lit by hot studio lighting, was a 3-foot testament to her love for her husband, Jack, all done up in fondant and food coloring.

And, man, was she itching to try it. After spending eight hours sequestered in a chilly conference room, she could smell the sugar wafting off the confection, created as part of the Hannahs’ participation on “Food Network Challenge: Newlywed Cakes,” which debuted Jan. 10.

“When I asked if I could eat some before the show, they said, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to eat that, they ship these in, it’s stale, hard cake,’ which is easier to work with,” she says. “I was so bummed because I love wedding cake, and that’s pretty much what these are.”

Going on a food-themed reality show and not getting a taste? Now that’s a challenge.

The Hannahs, 2008 Kansas University graduates, were chosen as one of four newlywed couples featured on the show, which challenges cake designers to create a cake in eight hours for a shot at $10,000.

Everything but the lack of taste-testing was a dream for Mallory, 24, who’d coerced Jack, 23, into trying out to get on the show even though they wouldn’t win anything, because she’s a die-hard Food Network fan.

“It was so random, and I feel like what were the odds that we even got on it?” she says. “I guess it kind of gave me some enthusiasm for … real people do actually make it on this kind of stuff.”

It’s showtime

On the show, usually, the designers know the theme — Disney characters, superheroes, etc. — and have time to plan what they’re doing before they get there. But in this case, they were going into the day blind.

The cake designed by Jack Hannah for his wife, Mallory, features layers that symbolize eras in their relationship. The bottom layer is high school, next is the proposal, next is their KU Study Abroad trip to Italy, next is their trip to the 2008 Orange Bowl and the final layer symbolizes the fountains on the Country Club Plaza, where they live.

The twists were topsy-turvy: The husbands were enlisted to help the designers create a cake for their wives based on their lives together. Not only would they help conceptualize the cake, but they’d be the putting on an apron and help create it themselves.

That’s not all: The show’s judges weren’t going to pick the winner. Instead, they were going to rank the cakes 1 through 4, and if, and only if, the wife of the winning cake could pick out her cake, the cake decorator would win the show’s $10,000 prize. If she couldn’t, the wife with the runner-up cake would give it a go with money on the line to pick the designer of that cake and so on.

For the husbands, the challenge meant a pressure-packed day in front of the cameras, while the wives were kept under lock and key — guards even escorted the ladies to the bathroom.

Cake designer Lauren Bozich says that though she didn’t know which couple she’d be working with for the challenge, she zeroed in on the Hannahs the second the couples came into the studio.

“They just looked really cute and young and fun and happy. And I was like, ‘I hope I get them,'” says Bozich, a cake designer at the White Flower Cake Shoppe in Beachwood, Ohio.

Bozich said she got a dream client and partner in Jack. His idea was to create a cake reliving his six-year relationship with Mallory in layers. He also was a hands-on competitor, getting his hands into the mix. The only problem? The Hannahs’ love of sports.

“I like doing cakes shaped like purses and shoes,” Bozich says. “It basically turned into this whole sports-themed cake, and I’m like, ‘How do you draw lines on a basketball?'”

After a non-stop day of icing, painting and perfecting, the team’s vision was complete: a 3-foot confection that told the Hannahs’ story as well as a child’s picture book. The foundation layer represented their high school courtship from prom to Mallory’s state basketball championship. Next came his proposal to her at a KU fraternity party. The middle layer signified their summer spent in Italy as part of a KU study abroad program. The top layer paid homage to the trip they took to watch the Jayhawks football team play in the Orange Bowl their senior year. And the topper was an elaborate fondant fountain Jack made himself as a tribute to their home: the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.

Mallory was impressed.

The judges loved the cake’s story-telling potential but hated the cake’s color scheme: KU’s crimson and blue and the colors of Jack’s fraternity, Beta Theta Pi.

“They obviously didn’t respect the crimson and blue for KU. They thought it looked like a little kid’s bedroom or something like that,” Jack says. “And then the baby blue and the baby pink were kind of the colors of my fraternity — so, everything was there for a reason, they were just too thickheaded to see it.”

The Hannahs and Bozich were ranked second. If the bride of the winning team couldn’t pick out her cake, Mallory would get her shot, but she was sure the wife of the top-ranked cake would pick correctly. And, indeed, the winning wife picked out her cake.

“I picked (Jack’s) out from the hallway,” Mallory says, laughing. “Not only could I pick out mine, I could pick out each of the other girls’, too, just from getting to know them in the room.”

Taste of fame

Ever since the show’s original airing, the couple have been enjoying what Jack Hannah calls “15 seconds of fame.” Most of the experience has been good, including reconnecting with folks they haven’t seen since their school days at Spring Hill High, especially with the show on repeat.

Other run-ins have been stickier than unruly fondant. The weirdest encounter? Jack got a message on Facebook from a girl he’d never met. Turns out she saw the show, thought he seemed like a nice guy, and was hoping he might have some similarly tempered single friends who he’d set up with her. Needless to say, the Hannahs found it more creepy than sweet.

What was sweet, though, was the Hannahs’ watch party for the episode’s premiere. Mallory wasn’t about to have her guests go cake-free like she did that hot August day in Denver. She made sure to have the event at a venue — The Cashew Bar and Grill, 2000 Grand Blvd., in Kansas City, Mo. — that allowed outside food and drink and then lined up a parade of homemade cakes for everyone to enjoy. Unlike the Hannahs’ perfect relationship cake, which will only be enjoyed on celluloid.

“Apparently they just trash them. I think that’s so sad,” Mallory says. “I was like, ‘Can I take a layer of it home with me?’ Nope, they just threw it away.”