For Pamela Kramer of Stayner, getting onto The Great Canadian Baking Show was an exercise in dogged determination. Kramer originally applied to the show back in 2019 for Season 3. She made it to the “in-person audition” stage but was not ultimately selected for the show. She vowed to keep trying.
Kramer continued to apply each season, and was finally successful in Season 8. The process started with an online application that took nearly two hours to complete, then a 15-minute Zoom call with a casting producer and finally the two-hour bake-along audition.
She says her skills had evolved considerably over the years, so for her audition, she created a heart shaped “burn-away” cake. In an homage to her first audition, the cake was topped with a layer of wafer paper decorated with the words “On Your Mark, Get Set…”When she lit the topping, it burned away to reveal the word BAKE.
Kramer says she was not very competitive as a child.
“When I finally started baking as an adult, I thought, maybe this is the sport where I can excel,” she said.
She took up baking in her mid 20s, after grad school.
“I was going through a particularly hard time in my life and was looking for a healthy coping mechanism,” explains Kramer. “I took a random cake decorating course at a little bakery in Toronto and thought, ‘I’ve found my thing!’”
For Kramer, baking is a love language.
“I give it all away. It’s how I show people how much I love and appreciate them.”
Most of her baking involves cakes, cupcakes and pastry. She likes to use local and in-season ingredients and support local growers.
Kramer has been teaching for the past 10 years. In her first six years with the Dufferin Peel School Board she taught in 13 different schools. Four years ago she moved to Stayner to accept a permanent position with the Simcoe County Board of Education. She now teaches Grade 11 and 12 Co-op Education at Banting Memorial High School in Alliston. Kramer coaches students in baking for theOntario Skills Competition. “It’s great to see students taking an interest in something I’m so passionate about.”
“I teach in a rural area,” says Kramer, “so other teachers are constantly bringing me things from their gardens. One day I came home with 12 pounds of rhubarb.”
Season 8 of the Great Canadian Baking Show was recently taped in Toronto, and will begin airing on CBC Oct. 6. Each episode includes three challenges – the Signature Bake, the Technical Bake and the Show Stopper. Heading into the competition Kramer expected to shine in the technical bake area, but she found those challenges exceptionally difficult.
“I’m somebody who really pays attention to the smallest details so the Signature and Technical challenges were hard because they didn’t allow time to do things the way I would have liked,” said Kramer. “The Show Stopper challenges were easiest because we had more time.”
All participants were housed in a Toronto hotel, in rooms with kitchens where they could practise. In fact, says Kramer, the filming schedule was so rigorous with 14- to 15-hour days that she was not inclined to do much baking when she got back to her room. While she is prohibited from discussing the outcome prior to the show airing, Kramer will say that she found the experience overwhelmingly positive.
“I absolutely loved it,” said Kramer. “I’m proud of what I accomplished and I surprised myself.”