ALBEMARLE COUNTY, Va. (CBS19 NEWS) -- Charles Zimmerman never expected the opportunity to be featured on Food Network's "Holiday Wars."

“It’s a very exciting thing,” said Zimmerman, the assistant pastry chef at Farmington Country Club.

"Holiday Wars" takes a cake artist, a sugar artist, and a cookie artist, and has them create delicious holiday desserts in just a few hours.

“I got put in as the sugar artist on my team, which is a skill I don’t do a lot on a day-to-day basis, but it’s one of my hidden back-pocket talents. So, I got to do some chocolate work and sugar work for our team for these show pieces every week,” said Zimmerman.

Zimmerman was happy to take the talents he uses at Farmington and show them on a larger scale. 

“I’m excited for people to see what I can do, especially under time restraints, and something that’s a little out of the box from my normal job,” he added.

There were a lot of challenges throughout the show, but Zimmerman says the lessons he learned from it have helped him improve as a chef.

“I learned about structure inside of cakes, some gravity-defying elements, and it’s not your average everyday cake to make a realistic-looking sculpture, so it’ll be fun to experiment with some of those new techniques,” he said.

"Holiday Wars" premieres on Nov. 5 at 9 p.m. on Food Network.