LI baker competes on Food Network's 'Girl Scout Cookie Championship' 

A Ronkonkoma baker is among those competing Monday at 8 p.m. on the third episode of Food Network's "Girl Scout Cookie Championship."

Shot in a Jersey City studio in September, the episode, "Choco-mania!," challenged 26-year-old Taylor Kyriacou and four others to quickly concoct chocolate creations using Girl Scout Cookies.

"It was definitely a very intense, high-stress situation," Kyriacou, who was born in West Islip, tells Newsday. "And you don't realize it's very hot under all those [studio] lights, so it was hard having to work with chocolate and making sure it sets. We had a flash freezer, but it wasn't working, of course, so we weren't able to use it. We had to just use the refrigerators — and thankfully I had very small chocolate pieces" that could set without quick freezing.

The youngest of three children of Stephen Kyriacou, of North Babylon, and Margaret Kyriacou of Ronkonkoma, with whom she lives, Taylor began her online bakery Specialty Sweets 8 1/2 years ago while studying advertising and marketing at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology. While building her business, Taylor Kyriacou worked as a waitress and event coordinator at the restaurant Giorgio's in Nesconset, leaving in December to go full-time with her cakes-and-cookies company. A savvy social-media marketer, she maintains a physical presence through pop-up stores and local festivals and events.

Baking was "something that I would see on television and always loved," even working with tricky fondant icing as a child. Her freshman year of college, she ran across online photos of decorated cookies along with recipes, reviving her youthful interest.

"My grandpa always tells me, 'Everything's easy if you know how to do it and you have the right tools.' I was able to Google recipes and find the tools I needed — the piping bags, the tips, the cookie cutters — and actually make something work," says Kyriacou, who began Specialty Sweets as word-of-mouth business during weekends home.

The show's producers found her, she suspects, through her company's Instagram page. "They emailed me and said they liked my look, they liked my cakes, and wanted to know if I wanted to be a part of the show," she says. "I had a few FaceTime interviews with them and it all happened very, very quickly."

Less quick has been her nine-year relationship with boyfriend Nick, a mortgage broker whom she's known since middle school and began dating when she was a senior at Connetquot High in Bohemia and he was a freshman in college. "We'll get a house first," she says of their future plans together. "He's very particular. He's like, 'I'm not buying just anything on the market.' And I'm, like" she says, with jovial exasperation, "All right, all right!"