CBC’s Talented Finalists Chat About a Reality Baking Smash

The final four give us the delicious scoop on a Canadian TV favourite

There are plenty of feel-good franchises out there in the TV landscape, but few are more heartwarming than the tented bake-off featuring passionate amateur cooks showing off their own incredible kitchen skills—all while helping each other succeed. As the fourth season of the Canadian version of this British hit nears its end, TV Week spoke to the four remaining contestants to get a behind-the-scenes scoop. Is everyone really always this happy?

Tanner Davies, 28, marketing consultant from Winnipeg, Manitoba
The show may be relaxing for the viewer, but not always so inside that tent.
The experience is a lot of things, but soothing is not a word that I would use. There’s constant excitement and nerves. It’s never any bad feelings, unless we feel really disappointed in what we did. A lot of the panic and fear doesn’t necessarily make it to the final cut because it is meant to be a pleasant viewing experience.

This year, the contestants Zoom auditioned to be on the show.
Normally they do in-person auditions for the final round, so we imitated that with our virtual auditions. They gave us a task, and we had to bake it live on the call with the culinary producer and the actual story producers. Unfortunately, they couldn’t taste it, but the culinary producer is a professional baker. She understands ingredient proportions well enough that she would be able to assume if something would taste good or not.

The delirium behind the scenes makes for some of the best memories.
After one episode taped and we were just waiting to hear the result, I was sitting with Raufikat in the green room. She was so, so, so tired but she really liked the outfit that I was wearing so she told me that I looked so good this episode that it made her miss her husband. Raufikat is such a funny, silly person. That doesn’t always make it on camera.

Raufikat Oyawoye, 35, IT-support engineer from Milton, Ontario
Sometimes the third time really is the charm.
I first applied as a hoot. I was tired of sending out job applications. I went to the [show’s] website, and saw that it had closed, but applied anyway. They called me the next year and said, could I send in my application again for the current season? But then, in 2019, I was pregnant with my son. His due date was around the time when filming was supposed to finish. I told them, ‘I can do it, I can do it,’ and they said, ‘There’s no way we’ll let you bake when you’re that heavily pregnant.’ In 2020, I applied again and this time everything went smoothly. The rest is history.

The contestants help each other, on and off screen.
If you have a problem, you can talk to them about it. If you have an idea or you have something that is not working out, we can all share it and figure it out together. They’re all fantastic people. I think any one of us would get along with any one of the other bakers from any of the other seasons because we are all basically the same: You are there just to show what you can do as a baker and you want to win because you had the best bake, not because someone else didn’t do well.

“30 seconds left” is not quite the chaotic scene we see on TV.
That is a trick to make you, the viewer, feel a bit tense. It’s not like anybody is coasting along, but you have just enough time, maybe five or 10 minutes, to finish whatever you have going. Because they’re so experienced [in making the show], they know how long this thing will take, and they give you just that much time. So, it’s not as close as they make it seem on the show, but it’s still pretty close.

Mahathi Mundluru, 24, business analyst from Markham, Ontario
Seeing yourself on TV is like experiencing the tent again for the very first time.
I remember the major stuff that happened, but I’ve forgotten a lot of the little things. There’s so much happening in the tent that I didn’t even notice until I’m watching it on TV now. Like, I didn’t realize that Sheldon melted a pastry scraper right behind me. As a viewer, I used to think, ‘It’s really fun.’ Watching it now, I’m stressed for everyone the entire time.”

The game is never lost on one meal.
In episode five, I had a pretty rough signature and in the technical I didn’t turn on my stove, so I ended up serving raw meat to the judges. I was like, ‘There is no way, no matter what I do, I can make it past this week.’ After the first day of filming, I was pretty bummed, but I thought to myself, ‘I have the rest of my life to cry about not turning the stove on, but I only have today to bake.’ I just went for it, andit worked in my favour.”

Everyone really is that friendly.
When I was watching the show previously, I always thought, ‘Oh, they’re friends on screen, but maybe they’re just doing this for the camera.’ It’s not true. We’re all still very good friends. We talk almost every day. We’re there for each other all the time. It’s a really close-knit community, because we’ve gone through this experience that not a lot of people are going to understand, so I think we just have a connection that is going to last forever.

Maggie Frith, 42, stay-at-home mom and former lawyer from Toronto, Ontario
So close, yet so far.
I’ve got three young kids and a very supportive husband, and in my head, I kind of realized that I was going to have to physically be away. Emotionally, I didn’t really realize how hard it was going to be. I missed my daughter’s first day of kindergarten and my son’s first day at a new school. It was funny to be so close, but not be able to see them. We filmed in Toronto and I live in Toronto, but I didn’t tell them how close I actually was.

No one has time to think, “Please let someone in the tent do worse than me.”
I don’t think there’s really time to process it in that way. It’s such a high-intensity, in-the-moment experience. You forget that there are others doing their thing because you’re so focused on doing your own thing and your own best. That’s what makes it a really great show and a really challenging show, because it’s not a competition where you’re winning, like, $100,000. It’s a bunch of people who love to bake, and that’s, I think, what comes across when you’re watching it.

Baking is, in itself, the prize.
My dad was a politician and my two older sisters went into the law, so I just went into the law. It quickly became clear that practicing law was not my calling, but I would spend lunch hours doing research on ganache. I realized that life’s really too short to spend your days doing something you don’t love. Being a recovered lawyer and baker mom was really the best decision I ever made. To be on the show is a combination of all these choices I’ve made. Who gets to do what they love 12 hours a day for six weeks straight? The fact that I was able to have that experience, I wouldn’t trade it for a thing.

The Great Canadian Baking Show airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on CBC