Cathy Ta was just a hobby baker with a full-time job as a banker until a certain opportunity came along her way in early 2022 — and made her think beyond finance and budget planning to maybe starting a bakery in New Westminster.
The New West resident was selected as one among the top 24 bakers from across the country — eight from around the region of the three host cities including Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax — to compete in Cross Country Cake Off, which premiered on CTV on Dec. 15.
The reality baking competition has three regional rounds that whittle down the number of bakers to two from each region who then get to battle it out in the finals for a cash prize of $50,000.
Ta, who is one of the four bakers from Western Canada to impress the judges - TV host and author Mary Berg and Vancouver pastry chef Andrew Han, and make it to the second round, called the show a "wonderful life experience" that was also "nerve-wracking."
“I came from a background with no training whatsoever. And I had actually only been baking professionally, in that completing cake orders and doing custom cakes, for less than a year at that point. I was really green in this field.”
Ta had applied to the show on a "whim" after one of her friends had sent her the link to the application form.
“And lo and behold, I got a call back!” said Ta, with a note of excitement.
Going into the show, Ta said, “There was always a doubt in my head: ‘Is this good enough?’ ‘Is this going to meet their (the judges’) expectations?’.”
But Ta said she focused on just being true to the person she was — a philosophy that, in fact, helped her move forward in the competition.
For the first qualifying round, Ta presented an old-fashioned yellow cake — with Swiss meringue buttercream, and fondant that was crafted and painted by her.
She called it ‘A cake for the baker’ because “it was a cake that just kind of demonstrated all the love, all the mess, all the time, all the equipment and the outcome of what a baker goes through in the process of making something delicious and beautiful.”
In other words, it represented her love for baking.
But the cake was also an ode to the memory of her new beginnings in Canada, she said.
“I'm an immigrant to Canada — my background is Vietnamese, and I was actually born in a refugee camp in Indonesia. And then, my parents, my sisters and I were sponsored to come to Canada later on,” she said. “The first cake I had in Western Canada was an old-fashioned yellow cake.”
And so she decided to “go nostalgic” and make her version of it.
The judges loved it — but how different was it to bake a cake for a reality show versus at home?
“When you are in the show, everything's so high stakes, and you get so anxious; there are a lot of moving parts, because at the end of the day, it’s not just making a cake, you are on camera; they're going to be asking questions and you're going to be judged, and there are other competitors...”
“All those things are running through your mind, and they prohibit you from doing things that you may normally do, like going at your own pace, for one. The anxiety will cause you to do things out of order as well...and it could definitely lead you to make a couple of mistakes as well.”
But the experience is worth it, she added without missing a beat. “It really helped me see how far I've come…to be able to present myself with more confidence and be able to say, ‘Yeah, I do this, and I'm pretty good at it,’” said Ta.
“Before, I would kind of shy away and be like, ‘I'm just so new at this. And I don't know if I can do this.’”
It’s not just the boost of confidence, the show has convinced her that she can, after all, live her dream of starting a brick and mortar baking shop in the city.
“Nothing big really, something small, something to call my own and something where everything has a bit of my heart in it.”
Watch Cross Country Cake Off on CTV, CTV.ca and the CTV app at 9 p.m. on Dec. 19 and 20. Post that, the show will return to CTV in 2023 with all-new episodes.
