Courtney Lapresi who won the fifth season of MasterChef has pursued a career in sales and aerial dancing instead of being a chef.
Courtney Lapresi first joined the MasterChef cast all the way back in 2014 and eventually emerged as the winner of the fifth season of the show.
Even though she made such an impression as a chef on the show, she did not go into a culinary career following her win and actually went into sales. Courtney is still active on social media platforms to this day.
About Courtney Lapresi’s run on MasterChef
MasterChef is one of the few cooking competition shows on television which allows amateurs to compete.
In 2014, Courtney Lapresi was one of 22 amateur contestants who managed to get through the audition stages and got the opportunity to cook in front of Joe Bastianich, Graham Elliot, and Gordon Ramsay for a chance at winning the grand prize on the fifth season of the competition show.
In the final episode of the season, Courtney wowed the judges with her meal of crispy pig’s ear, duck beak, and cherry meringue for dessert and ended up beating the runner-up, Elizabeth Cauvel, taking home the prize of $250,000 in cash and a special deal to publish her very own cookbook.
MasterChef: Where are they now – Courtney Lapresi
Courtney made quite the impression on the judges and fans of the show during her run on season five. Even so, she is one of the few winners that has not pursued a culinary career after walking away with the grand prize.
In fact, most of the winners that competed on the show before Courtney, including the season one winner Whitney Miller, the season two winner, Jennifer Behm-Lazzarini, the season three winner, Christine Ha, and the season four winner, Luca Manfé, have all pursued their own ventures in the culinary industry.
However, Courtney, who was always a bit of an out-of-the-box, creative thinker during her time on the show, has followed a different career path entirely.
Like most of the other MasterChef winners, Courtney did, in fact, release her own cookbook about a year after season five of MasterChef first aired, called “Everyday Fancy: 65 Easy, Elegant Recipes for Meals, Snacks, Sweets, and Drinks.” However, she joined Tesla as a salesperson not long thereafter.
Even though Courtney’s season on MasterChef was almost a decade ago, she is clearly still proud of her great achievement on the show.
In fact, her Instagram bio still reads “Winner of MasterChef Season 5”. Courtney is also still active on social media to this day and she regularly posts snippets of her daily life on platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
What did Courtney do before she was on MasterChef?
Before Courtney joined the cast of season five of MasterChef and went on to win the competition, she was a Dance Teacher. She taught ballet and ballet jazz classes at First Position Dance Arts in Pennsylvania.
After her win on the show, Courtney explained that her background in performance art helped her stay calm under pressure and to realise that her nerves were only a sign that she cared about what she was doing.
Courtney’s cookbook
The cookbook that Courtney released as part of her winning prize on the show is still available for purchase on Amazon for $23.98 (for the hardcover version) or $2.99 (for the Kindle version).
Moreover, the book currently has a star rating of 4.3 out of five on the platform.
The book features some of the recipes that helped Courtney secure her winning position on the show, as well as some of her all-time favourite recipes. It also includes some charming anecdotes about the origins and inspirations behind every recipe.
What does Courtney’s social media presence say about her?
Courtney currently has a very active social media presence. She has posted on her Instagram account as recently as 26 February 2022. On Twitter, her most recent post was posted on 20 December 2022.
Like any regular person, Courtney posts about all kinds of things on her social media accounts, but her true love for food and for the culinary arts shines through, as she posts about the meals that she is eating regularly.
An example of this is her Instagram video about the Chick-fil-A meal that she had on 28 January 2023.
Courtney’s love for her artistic pursuits and dancing also shine through on her social media and she describes herself as an “Aerial Dancer” on her Instagram page.
She also regularly shares videos of her new routines and promotes her OnlyFans and MyFreeCams profiles on her social media accounts along with her general opinions and life updates.
