Making Thunder Bay famous (2 photos)

Thunder Bay’s Tourist Pagoda behind the Prince Arthur hotel is now famous, thanks to local cake artist Jennifer Riley.

Riley teamed up with Sweet Escape’s Julie Einarson and best friend Nickol Dawson to participate in the baking competition show The Big Bake on Food Network Canada.

“A friend sent me a link to the application, and I was really excited because it was in Canada. I went through the interview process and when I found out I made it, I cried,” says Riley.

“It’s always been a goal of mine since I started - I was watching Cake Boss and decided to become a cake artist,” she says.

The show was filmed in Toronto in the summer of 2019, and for months she had to keep quiet about it, until it aired in December. Riley’s team was up against two other teams, competing for a $10,000 prize. The task was a giant gingerbread house-themed cake, and Riley chose to recreate Thunder Bay’s pagoda.

“We wanted to keep it Thunder Bay; we’re all from Thunder Bay and we love Thunder Bay,” she says.

During the five-hour filming session, the three women built and decorated the 300 pound cake, which was 4.5 feet tall and 3 feet wide. “Those cakes would normally take weeks to do. In the end, the cake didn’t turn out exactly the way we wanted, but our goal was to have a finished cake at the end, no matter what it took to get there,” Riley explains.

The most challenging part was actually not cake-related, but the drill that they used to build the platform for their cake. “That drill! I still have nightmares about the drill,” she laughs.

“I work very well under pressure; I’m a one-person business, so you have to be able to think on your feet and be fast at what you do,” she says. Einarson focused on baking all the cakes, while Riley worked on the decoration, assisted by Dawson. “Our personalities got along well, we didn’t fight. We just pushed each other and it was a successful outcome,” she says.

Would she do it again? “It’s an experience, and it’s not for everybody, but I would,” she says.

Constantly pushing herself to do more, Riley has been featured in multiple industry magazines, such as Cake Masters magazine (February 2020) and the cover of the January 2019 issue of American Cake Decorating magazine.

In addition to making custom cakes and cupcakes at her home-based business, Riley has a busy teaching schedule. She has been teaching the hospitality students at her alma mater, St. Ignatius High School for three years now, and has lately been taking her workshops to remote communities in the north. She has sent custom orders up by plane before, and people started asking if she can give classes in their communities.

For the fly-in communities, she gets a freight seat for her cakes, buttercream and decorating tools, to make sure the supplies reach their destination with her. She has taken her classes to Aroland, and Popular Hill, where groups of 20 to 25 participants look forward to her teaching them how to make beautiful treats. “It’s really fun, it’s different, and I love teaching,” she says.