Most people see cake as a celebratory treat to enjoy at a wedding or birthday party.

Maeve Rochford sees it as a battleground.

Wielding an offset spatula like a sword, the petite, tough-talking La Jolla baker is a culinary competitor, one in a growing breed that’s been fueled by reality TV shows with titles such as “Cake Wars,” “Last Cake Standing” and “Ultimate Cake Off.”

This weekend, Rochford, who won Food Network’s “Holiday Baking Championship” in December, will bring her attitude and decorating arsenal to the Del Mar Fairgrounds for the San Diego Cake Show.

Now in its 33rd year, the cake show is for the first time a ticketed event, expanding from the low-key lobby of the La Jolla Village Square mall to the fairgrounds to accommodate the public’s increasing hunger for everything cake.

Maeve Rochford will teach a class at the San Diego Cake Show on how to evoke emotion through texture and color. — Howard Lipin

Rochford will be teaching a class and appearing on a panel with a half-dozen other TV cake contestants.

33rd Annual San Diego Cake Show When: Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (cake show); class times vary Where: Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar (Activity Center building) Tickets: $8.50 per day; $16 for both; free for children under 8; sandiegocakeshow.com/tickets Info: sandiegocakeshow.com

And reflecting San Diego’s status as a hotbed for culinary reality TV success, another panel will feature San Diego cooking champs Claudia Sandoval, winner of Fox’s “MasterChef,” and Nathan Odom, who took the “MasterChef Junior” crown, as well as local “MasterChef” finalist Nick Nappi.

Rochford said she’s in discussions with Food Network about a possible show.

“They’ve come over to the snark side,” she said, adding that her “Holiday Baking” win was surprising because of her steely demeanor. But that’s what also made her a strong competitor: Rochford said she approached that sweet skirmish on the show with the same determination that landed her the title of 1998 American Rowing Champion.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re competing in sports or cake as long you’re going for the ‘W,’” she said, exactingly brushing a three-tiered cake with edible paint and disco dust at her La Jolla bakery Sugar and Scribe.

“If you’re OK with being average, you’re not pressing yourself. Attitude is everything in everything I go for. I never want to do anything where I could lose,” she said.

In an interview from Los Angeles on Wednesday, Duff Goldman, considered the Michael Jordan of extreme cake-baking, said people are fascinated by the high-pressure world of competitive baking because cake is relatable to everyone’s life.

“There’s something about cake that’s very achievable in viewers’ minds. A lot of cooking can be really daunting,” said Goldman, host of the Food Network’s upcoming show “Cake Masters.”

“Cake is easy; it’s just flour, butter, sugar and eggs. And if you can’t even do that, you can go out and buy one. But then they start to decorate it, and that’s when things get really interesting. It just draws people in and they say, ‘Oh, this is cool.’”

Goldman, who has about 77,000 Instagram followers and 87,000 on Twitter, said hundreds of people a day send him photos of their homemade over-the-top creations.

“I’ve seen some crazy stuff; people are really creative,” he said. “When you see a kid’s Ironman cake, and they put a real light bulb in it and it works, it’s like, ‘OK, mission accomplished.’”

There might not be a blinged-out Ironman confection at the San Diego Cake Show this weekend, but there will be about 150 decorated cakes in competition, a 50 percent increase over last year’s submissions, according to Monika Stout, co-chair of the 2016 San Diego Cake Show.

The cakes, which will be on display throughout the event, were entered in nearly 30 categories by junior, amateur and all the way up to professional/master level bakers.

The Cake Show class on how to create a floating rainbow unicorn cake is fully booked, but there will plenty of imaginative, intricate cakes on display. Courtesy photo

Full-day classes on intricate cake building — including one on creating a 3-foot floating rainbow unicorn — are being held on Friday, and have been sold out for weeks. Dozens of hands-on regular and mini-classes are being offered Saturday and Sunday.

“Cake has come so far. It used to be just two layers with some buttercream. Things people are doing have gone off the rails. ... It excites people’s imaginations,” Stout said.

She should know. She showed up at a Super Bowl party at the home of a top executive at Ballast Point with a beer cooler. Or so her hosts thought.

“I got there and they said, ‘Hey, Monika, you didn’t need to bring a cooler of beer, we’ve got a tap.’ And I had tell them it was a cake. I love that,” she said.

Pass the chips, wait the cake ... Courtesy photo

The proliferation of televised baking competitions has had a sugar-coated trickle-down effect, said Tom Vaccaro, dean for baking and pastry at New York’s Culinary Institute of America, regarded as the country’s premier cooking school.

“Cake is the dessert of choice at all celebrations. It takes the shape and form of whatever you pour it into, and (intense decorating) is an opportunity for people to show off their skills and talents, be creative,” Vaccaro said.

“It’s simply another form of celebration. I don’t think anything is transforming here. It’s fun and it’s new and people are gravitating toward it.”

Vaccaro said heightened awareness of baking would only draw more people to the profession. But he wouldn’t bite when asked whether reality TV was a good way to achieve that.

“It’s great exposure,” he said. “Some of it is scary for me. But there is an audience for it and it is what is.”

Sandoval, the San Diego chef who won Season 6 of “MasterChef,” said food has has long been at the heart of competition because it’s at the heart of the family.

“It’s always been something that people care about, everybody always argues that their mother’s lasagna is the best. It’s not necessarily new, it’s just on a different platform. And producers have figured out that people want to watch it,” she said.

In fact, on channels like Food Network and TLC, cooking and baking competitions can dominate an entire night of prime-time programming.

On “MasterChef,” Sandoval said she was afraid of the sweet challenges because presentation is such a big part of baking today.

She said her unconventional tres leches cake, “which is more milk soaked than milk drenched,” notched her a win because of its taste.

“It was all about the flavor,” said Sandoval, whose cookbook, “Claudia’s Cocina — A Taste of Mexico,” is coming out in May.

Goldman agreed that when it comes down to it, even in a high-level competition, the most beautifully decorated or tricked-out cake has to be delicious.

“At the end of the day, we’re cake decorators and a cake’s main function is it has to be good,” Goldman said. “If you make something so beautiful, you have to have a reason to destroy it.”