A St. Albert chocolatier has won a Food Network challenge by crafting a cake that looks like Marie Antoinette.
St. Albert baker and Compass Chocolates owner Priya Winsor was the winner of the Food Network’s 11th Spring Baking Championship, the finale of which aired Monday May 19 on various networks.
Spring Baking Championship is a reality TV competition where chefs compete to craft unique dishes using various themes, ingredients, and handicaps under a tight time limit. Contestants in this year’s show had to create butterfly-shaped napoleons, edible candles, and glow-in-the-dark cakes, amongst other culinary curiosities. Winsor was one of this season's 13 contestants.
Winsor said she filmed the 11-part series in Los Angeles in May 2024, and has had to keep quiet about her win ever since.
“It was tough not to be able to share my full experience of filming with my family and my kids,” she said, but it also made her family’s watch-along party Monday more exciting, as she was the only one who knew the result in advance.
Crazy cakes
Winsor said each episode of the show took about a day to film, and involved lots of interviews and hours and hours of baking. Along the way, she crafted a mango-coconut egg, a raspberry-flavoured Minecraft cube, and a BLT sandwich that was actually a cake.
The final challenge was to construct a three-layer cake with floral flavours inspired by the flamboyant hairstyles of Marie Antoinette atop a mannequin’s head.
Winsor said she panicked a bit when the challenge was revealed, but soon realized she had an edge or two.
“Hairstyling I know, because previously I was a hairstylist for 20 years,” she said, and she also specialized in avant-garde hairdos.
Winsor also placed first in the semi-finals, meaning she got to choose the hairstyle each of the three finalists had to use.
Winsor said she crafted a topiary-like cake with the flavour of orange blossoms. As chocolate was her strength, she added chocolate roots, vines, leaves, and petals to make her cake extra shrubby. She was a bit worried when she saw how different her cake looked compared to those of her competitors, but thought, “It’s okay to be creative and unique,” and stuck with her plan.
Winsor said the judges said her cake (which took about five hours to make) was a bit heavy on the filling, but awarded her the top prize of US$25,000, a feature in Food Network Magazine, and the title of Spring Baking Champion. She was shocked by her win, and said it still hadn’t fully sunk in a year later.
“I’m so thankful for the experience.”
Winsor said her time on the show stretched her skills as a baker and gave her the chance to work with some incredibly talented chefs. She planned to invest her winnings into her chocolate business and perhaps go on a vacation.
Winsor encouraged other bakers to keep practicing and to not be afraid to experiment.
“Sometimes everything will go exactly as expected and sometimes they won’t, and both are okay.”
Spring Baking Championship can be viewed on Food Network and other channels. Visit foodnetwork.com for details.
