Charlene Smith sat in front of the computer searching Google for a way to prove that her doctor's diagnosis was not going to stop her.

The Wareham born and bred 27-year-old was a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, one of the top culinary schools in the nation.

She was executive pastry chef at Sorellina, an upscale restaurant featuring modern Italian cuisine in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston.

And in April of 2011, she started to lose her vision in her left eye.

"You go through life thinking nothing can happen and you are invincible, and then one day something does happen," Smith said. "I want to do as much as I can now while I still can."

Smith's internet search landed her on the Food Network's website, where she learned about auditions for the network's TV show, "Sweet Genius."

The show, which features four chefs competing to make the best pastry -- using wild and unexpected ingredients such as Tabasco sauce, or even grass -- was the perfect challenge for Smith to show that losing her vision was not something that could stop her from doing what she loved.

Smith was diagnosed with macular degeneration, an eye condition common among people age 50 and older that results in vision loss, when she was 26 years old.

The condition, which causes blurry and double vision in her left eye, does not usually affect young people, Smith said, and there is a 50% chance that the condition will travel to the other eye within 5 years.

There is medication to slow it down, "it's like a chemo shot in my eye," she said, but no way to stop it. There is no history of the condition in her family.

"At first I really freaked out," Smith said about when she learned she had the condition, asking herself, "what am I going to do?"

When she came across the show "Sweet Genius," which offers a $10,000 prize and the title of "Sweet Genius" to its winners, she figured out exactly what she was going to do.

The show has eight episodes throughout the season, with each episode featuring four pastry chefs competing to win that episode. Each episode has three rounds of dessert making, where chefs have a limited amount of time to make the perfect pastry, Smith explained.

There are "special ingredients," such as the Tabasco sauce, as well as an "inspirational ingredient," such as a bonsai tree, that the chefs creatively use to shape their dessert, Smith said.

Creativity is something Smith, who grew up playing the flute and the guitar, painting in watercolors, and making quilts just like her mother, knew something about.

Smith was accepted as a contestant on "Sweet Genius" and was one of four chefs competing on the March 15 episode -- the first episode of the second season of the show.

Smith was charged with making a chocolate dish on her first round.

She was given Pop Tarts as her special ingredient and was told to use "goldfish" as her inspiration for the design of her dish.

While another contestant made a chocolate in the shape of a goldfish, Smith took it one step further and made a chocolate mousse incorporating air bubbles to resemble the bubbles found in a fish bowl.

Halfway through the preparation, she was given pumpkin seeds as another special ingredient, and formed them into a brittle made to resemble the bottom of the bowl.

Meanwhile, she manipulated other ingredients to look like the clear water, in effect creating the whole life of a goldfish, not just the goldfish itself.

And she did it all with only the use of her right eye and the peripheral vision in her left eye, often telling the cameraman on set "you gotta stay on my right side because I might run into you," Smith said.

Smith won the episode, which was called "Golden Genius," and took the $10,000 prize and the title of "Sweet Genius."

Smith did not tell host and celebrity chef Ron Ben-Israel about her "handicap" until the last round when the show's producers asked her to inform him.

He was surprised to find out, Smith said, and told her that he could not tell during the competition.

Smith is now a bit of a celebrity chef in her own right.

She recently stopped by her alma mater, Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, and visited with faculty and observed the students in the culinary program she was once a part of.

"They have an absolutely fantastic culinary program," Smith said, adding that the program has grown a lot.

In early summer she will be visiting with younger kids in the "Bean City Kids" youth enrichment program as part of the Boston Adult Education Center's Celebrity Chef series.

Coming face-to-face with a loss, Smith said, made her realize the important things in life.

"It really has changed a lot," she said. "I don't want to wait to have kids now. … There were things that I used to want to do, and now I'm just doing it."