The Great Canadian Baking Show is back for its delectable Season 8!
In one of Canada’s sweetest gigs, our beloved judges, Bruno Feldeisen and Kyla Kennaley tirelessly sample the beautiful creations crafted by our talented bakers. Crowning Canada’s star baker is no small feat, but they take on the challenge with gusto.
We watch them dispense wisdom to the bakers every episode, and it feels a bit unfair that we never get to ask our own questions. So, we took to social media and gathered your questions for our beloved judges. Being the gracious judges they are, they responded!
Here are some of their delightful answers.
What happens when you disagree?
BRUNO: We never do.
KYLA: Do we disagree?
BRUNO: We have that chemistry where we trust each other and we respect each other. So, we don’t call it disagreement. I think it’s more of a different opinion.
What is a classic mistake that bakers make in the tent?
KYLA: Sometimes bakers think they need to be overly ambitious and they miss the point of the signature or the showstopper. They take things so far that we lose what makes the baking so special in the first place.
BRUNO: Stop opening that oven’s door. Every time you open the door, your temperature drops by 20° at least. Takes 10 minutes to recover. It does affect your baking process, so leave the door alone.
Do you get to pick your own outfits?
KYLA: I love fashion, so I love to work collaboratively and come up with great ideas. It’s so important that we have that timeless summer presence and we’re lucky to have such a great team to help us with that. They have great relationships with Canadian designers, so we have a chance to showcase some of the styles and things that are going on right now in Canada.
On average you need two bites, one bite to discover, one bite to analyze.– Bruno Feldeisen
BRUNO: I’m more of a jeans, sneakers and hoodie guy, so I enjoy the process, but I trust the stylist and the wardrobe crew to dress me properly.
What is each of your biggest baking fails?
BRUNO: The big fail became a success for me. I was in New York doing a banquet for 400 people and they had chocolate mousse cakes. It was speech after speech and I told my crew, ‘let’s put them back in the freezer for 10 minutes because they’re too soft’. We forgot because we were joking around and we sent out the cakes frozen hard. I remember the organizer asked to talk to me and I said that’s it, ‘I’m going to be fired.’ The guy [a chef] told me, ‘this is the best chocolate ice cream cake I ever had!’
KYLA: The bride wanted a wedding cake with mascarpone cheese filling decorated with fondant. It was a time when we were using a lot of fondant decorations, so it was quite top-heavy. I made it the night before and I came into the kitchen the next morning and it had melted like a waterfall.
I did like any baker would do and quickly recreated the whole design as best I could, brought it to the venue and the same thing happened. I bought the best bottle of champagne I could afford and I sliced the cake up. It was a delicious cake with mascarpone cheese and the bride and I are still great friends today.
How many bites of each bake do you take to judge?
KYLA: That was my biggest learning curve. In my first season, I ate just about everything on the plate and loved every minute of it but now I’ve learned that two or three good bites gives us an indication of the flavours.
BRUNO: I learned how to pace myself properly and not jump blindly into devouring cakes too fast. It can be a bit of suffering when you have to digest. On average you need two bites, one bite to discover, one bite to analyze.
What do you bake the most on repeat for your own family?
KYLA: For all the wonderful things in life I’ve ever baked, chocolate chip cookies are a staple in our household. It seems like a catastrophe if we don’t have cookies in the jar.
BRUNO: Churros.
KYLA: Churros?
BRUNO: I use a choux paste recipe so I can make eclairs on the same batch. But the one people always enjoy is the churros.
KYLA: They want a dunk.
What is your favourite guilty pleasure food?
BRUNO: Any kind of ice cream bar that you buy in an Asian store. So, Thai ice cream, Korean ice cream, Taiwanese ice cream…fun to eat, great flavours, unique combination. That’s my to-go.
KYLA: Bread is probably my biggest guilty pleasure. If you had a fresh loaf of bread and any kind of cheese, I could sit down and devour the whole thing!
If you were to bake for a famous figure, who would it be and what would you make?
BRUNO: I will bake for the film director Villeneuve, because I love the way he does movies, and I’d like to see his response when he eats my dessert, just to give me a different perspective. Somebody who has no connection to food but is an artist on his own, and see if he says nothing or he says something very creative.
KYLA: The Mad Hatter! You could make an incredible array of zany desserts and have a delightful afternoon making up riddles about them.
What happens to the leftovers?
KYLA: What leftovers?
BRUNO: There’s never any leftovers.
KYLA: I think it’s how we get the best crew in Canada because they know they get to enjoy the delicious leftovers.
Watch The Great Canadian Baking Show on CBC Gem now.
