A St. Albert chocolatier will be on international television next week as she competes in a Food Network bake-off for big bucks.
St. Albert baker Priya Winsor is one of the three Canadian contestants competing in the 11th edition of Spring Baking Championship, a reality TV competition which airs on the Food Network. The first episode of this year’s contest airs March 10.
Originally from Newfoundland, Winsor said she and her family moved to St. Albert nine years ago after fleeing the Fort McMurray wildfire. She earned her bakery and pastry arts diploma from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology just prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and started Compass Chocolates soon after.
Winsor said Spring Baking Championship organizers saw her work on social media and called her last spring to see if she wanted to take part in the competition.
“I honestly thought I was being pranked,” she said, but she decided to go for it.
Hosted by former Montreal Alouettes player Jesse Palmer, Spring Baking Championship sees chefs compete to bake unique dishes using various themes, ingredients, and handicaps under a tight time limit. The overall winner at the end of each season wins $25,000, a feature in Food Network Magazine, and the title of Spring Baking Champion.
Winsor said she spent about a month on set in Los Angeles last year competing in the show while her husband Aaron took care of their three teenagers back home. The show featured 13 competitors instead of the usual 12 and was set in a magical spring-themed shop.
“The set was incredible,” she said, and featured many fog machines and elaborate portals/doorways.
While Winsor couldn’t reveal much about the show due to the Food Network’s no-spoilers policy, she said the premiere asked competitors to create a flower-themed dessert in two hours that reflected their personalities.
“One of the spring flowers I loved the most was cherry blossoms,” she said, so she based her dessert on them.
Information from the Food Network suggests later episodes feature Minecraft-like fruit cubes, butterfly-shaped napoleons, glow-in-the-dark ice-cream-filled cake bombs, and three-layer cakes that look like the gravity-defying hairstyles of Marie Antoinette.
“It was definitely a stretching experience,” Winsor said of the show, as she had done little in the way of professional baking before.
“It puts your creativity and your time management to the test, because the clock is always ticking.”
Winsor said she planned to watch next week’s premiere with her friends and family. While she knows how the show ends, she hasn’t told a soul about it.
“Not even my husband and kids know.”
Season 11 of Spring Baking Championship premieres on Food Network and Citytv+ March 10 at 6 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. Visit foodnetwork.com for details.
