The night before the start of the Great Canadian Baking Show (GCBS), Lauren Tjoe sat terrified in her hotel room. Not only is she allergic to gluten and dairy, but she was the youngest baker in her season by nine years.
“I got there and I was so scared,” said Tjoe, a fourth-year Sauder student. “Everyone had so many more life experiences than I had — so much more experience baking and being around food.”
It wasn’t just Tjoe’s inexperience that made her nervous. She put her life on hold for the show. She deferred a co-op opportunity to bake on Canada’s greatest stage.
“At the beginning, [I thought] if I go out the first round, then that whole rigamarole of deferring, that’s going to be for nothing,” said Tjoe. “So I was putting a lot of pressure on myself.”
Tjoe said she applied for the show twice before getting cast. The first time, she applied a bit late and didn’t think her application went through.
“Even if it had, I wouldn’t have been ready. I was still in the phase of having to follow recipes really carefully and not knowing how to make them my own,” she said.
The second time Tjoe applied to the show, she made it to the audition stage but wasn’t cast.
But the third time felt different. “I felt super confident in my baking and felt like if there was going to be a time when I went on the show, it would have been now or never,” said Tjoe.
After working year after year to get on the show, winning was all the more sweet for Tjoe.
Tjoe rolled into the final challenge of the season with a fresh win under her belt from the same episode. She was tasked with creating a garden party dessert centrepiece made from at least three different bakes.
With carrot-shaped scones, feta-jalapeno tarts that resembled pea pods and faux tomatoes made out of Korean pancakes and eggplant stroopwafels, Tjoe’s veggie garden-themed centerpiece dazzled the judges.
With that, she won the sixth season of the GCBS.
“Up until they called my name, I didn’t think I was going to win, and I’m honestly still in shock — it still feels like a dream,” Tjoe said. “I was speechless because the other bakers in the tent [are] so talented.”
Emotions washed over Tjoe the moment she was announced the winner. She felt relief because the competition was over and she wouldn’t have to feel that stress again, but she said she’d never worked harder for anything in her life.
“I can’t compute how I did everything I did in the amount of time that was allocated. I think if I tried to do that now, I am so out of practice doing things to time, it just doesn’t seem possible,” she said.
Tjoe found the GCBS a space where she was able to become “a completely different baker” because of the knowledge others shared with her. “I got such great feedback [from other contestants],” said Tjoe.
Since Tjoe is allergic to gluten and dairy, she often can’t taste what she bakes. Instead, she goes off her intuition, flavour combinations she knows work well, the smell and consistency of her creations and feedback from others.
“The ability to have people who knew what they were talking about give me feedback about my food, rather than my family just being like ‘Oh yeah, this is good,’ was I think the biggest help.”
This sense of camaraderie didn’t end in the kitchen, it extended into an ever-active group chat, with Tjoe’s phone buzzing with messages from former contestants throughout our interview.
“They’re the most amazing friends, and we’re constantly inspiring each other,” she said. “Right now someone is looking for an appetizer to bring to a dinner party, so we’re throwing out ideas in the group chat — it’s pretty cool.”
Tjoe said baking has allowed her to explore flavours from her childhood and heritage as a Dutch, Chinese and Indonesian person. But moving forward, Tjoe doesn’t think the baking path is for her.
Instead, she plans to work in Toronto this summer at Canada Pension Plan Investments — the co-op she’d originally deferred — and plans to finish her degree this December to work in corporate finance.
“Keeping my hobbies separate from my work is something that I find very valuable. Each one is a good break from the other one,” she said. “This sounds so dumb, but I really enjoy corporate finance ... I like working with numbers, and finance as a career gives me that. Then, I can go home and bake a bunch of pies … [but] my livelihood doesn’t depend on how many pies I bake that night.”
Despite Tjoe’s baking success, she said there is still much to learn. She wants to learn how to use — and keep alive — sourdough starter. “I don’t have the discipline to keep a starter alive,” said Tjoe. “I had two this term and they both died.”
But, just like many other university students, she’s just figuring it out and practicing as much as she can. That’s also her advice for anyone who wants to get into baking.
“Practice as much as you possibly can because there’s never a point where you’re going to be perfect at anything,” said Tjoe. “No matter what’s thrown at you, you’ll be able to replicate something or you’ll have a bank of knowledge to draw from.”