Winnipeg baking phenom wins gold at national competition

Tortes, breads, cakes — you name it, Calia Pacle can bake it.

The high school baking phenom battered the competition (pun intended) at the Skills Canada baking competition last week in Halifax and brought home gold.

"I did not think I won," Pacle told CBC Manitoba's Weekend Morning radio show host Nadia Kidwai. 

"Every province was sitting in the room and bronze was called out. Silver was called up and I was like, yeah, I definitely did not win at all. And then they say 'Manitoba: gold,' and I was like screaming and my teacher got the reaction, the raw footage, and it was just like, crazy.

"It was a crazy moment ... it just replays in my mind every single day."

Pacle has been baking for most of her life.

It's a tradition in her family: both sets of grandparents owned bakeries.

She started taking a pastry course in high school at Kildonan East Collegiate.

'You never know'

Her teachers encouraged her to put her skills to the test in the Skills Manitoba competition, where she took home gold in the baking category earlier this year, which sent her to the national competition in Halifax.

To win gold, Pacle had to show her mastery of petit four cakes and macarons, the meringue-based confection.

"The trickiest thing was probably my macarons," she said.

"You never know what's going to go wrong, because the texture could just go wrong instantly, or the ovens are different everywhere."

Pacle is a cake decorator for Sugar Blooms and Cakes and her dream is to one day open her own business — maybe even franchise it.

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