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Everyone loves a little baking right?

Victoria Besplug from Kindersley is a pastry chef who specializes in sourdough and creating mini cakes, as well as making pastries and working with many different baked bread recipes. She is currently working to be named “The Greatest Baker”.

Voting is ongoing, and taking place through an online contest that could earn her a feature article in Bake from Scratch magazine as well as a $20,000 prize. She was accepted into the contest at the start of the month, and has until May 20th to lock herself into a spot in the Top 15 with the ability to vote refreshing every 24 hours.

Besplug has been operating her own small home based business Made with Love Bakery for five years now, and hopes that winning the spring edition of this competition can help her get to a place where she can accomplish her dream of starting her own store front bakery in Kindersley with specialty baked breads, cakes and pastries.

With the competition pool so large Besplug did not want to seem overly confident when expressing why she should be named “The Greatest Baker”, instead just leaving us with this quote about why she loves what she does.

“I like to cater to everyone’s needs, and I’ve always enjoyed baking in general,” described Besplug while outlining her passion, “I love to express myself through baking and it’s always nice to see someone enjoying something that you made.”

As mentioned she specializes in sourdough and mini-cake creations, and here she is explaining with that passion why the pandemic has helped with mini-cakes, and why sourdough creations are some of her favorite projects to work on.

Of course when your passion is something as delicious and extravagant as cake making, you begin getting contracted out more and more by family.

“I’ve definitely become the designated birthday cake go-to,” laughed Besplug, “My nieces, nephews, kids all get spoiled.”

She doesn’t mind showing out when a family request comes in, but has had more and more opportunity over the years to show her skills to locals and allow them to slowly learn her name as time goes by. A local partnership with Swirl Cafe on Main Street has also provided a great amount of exposure for her business.

(Made with Love Bakery display at Swirl Cafe in Kindersley)

For now Besplug rents out a commercial kitchen in town for a few days a week to get her work done. An average day sees her finish up whatever inventory the cafe has ordered for the day, allowing her to focus on the bespoke side of operations.

“I am more of a custom bakery right now where I do the orders for Swirl as well as different things for anyone who messages me through Facebook. If I have extra time I will whip something up at the end of the day and put it on the flash sale. For anyone who wants something right away, there is always that last minute cake order that has been forgotten.”

Besplug’s sister Jade, an artist who was featured on West Central Online for International Women’s Day, is also very creative and has a similar attitude toward her custom work.

Even with the hopes of being named The Greatest Baker, Besplug is still excited to learn things along the way. One of her favourite kitchen motto's is ‘Mise en Place’.

“Everything has its place. It’s something that I have to remember at times too. Sometimes I am more flustered and I have things kind of everywhere. But everything has its place when you put it out,” explained Besplug, “You can really focus on what you are doing and your techniques, and let it all come together just a little bit easier.”

She believes that anyone who can read a recipe can start baking, but actually being able to go through it and understand what you are being told is the next key step. When everything is laid out and in its place, there isn’t the same panic involved during the process that provides a baker much more focus for their current task at hand.

Check out some of her more creative and personalized creations in the gallery below.

{gallery}Made with Love Bakery 2{/gallery}

Voting for the contest opened up on May 11th with it being cut down to the Top 15 on May 20th. You can only vote once every 24 hours, or pay in to provide some extra “hero” votes. The board is set to shrink every Thursday with Top 10 voting taking place after May 20th.

Expect to hear from the hopeful for Worlds Greatest Baker again before the big voting day next week, as Kindersley and the rest of west central Saskatchewan vote to help Besplug become The Greatest Baker.

View her profile, and cast your vote here.