Cake-ology pastry chef headed to national culinary finals

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This article was published 30/10/2024 (645 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pastry chef Austin Granados emerged a champion at Canada’s Great Kitchen Party Winnipeg, the regional qualifier for the 2025 Canadian Culinary Championships.

Monday’s event at the Fairmont Hotel saw five other local chefs competing for the coveted gold medal, with Graham Peltier of Tabula Rasa taking silver, and the bronze awarded to Jessica Young of Spruce Catering.

Granados, 30, co-owner of Cake- ology on Arthur Street, bagged the gold medal with a dessert featuring burrata mousse, strawberry kombucha compote, cod bone sable, duck fat caramel, dehydrated milk chip, apricot kernel cream, Japanese sweet potato cake, kombu salt, burnt shiitake and black sugar powder, basil and makrut lime oil, and microgreens.

Mike Green, head judge for Winnipeg, was one of seven judges who tasted six different dishes and wine pairings presented at the culinary competition. He said the panel was “blown away” by the sweet dish.

“Just reading chef Granados’s dish description was enough to make your head spin, but he pulled it off beautifully. I can’t recall ever having a full-on dessert like this in the competition, let alone one that won,” Green says.

“I knew he’d come up with something inventive, but I think even the chefs on the judging panel were pretty blown away by all the techniques he showed.”

Granados, who has worked and lived in New York, Hong Kong and Copenhagen, used techniques learned as a pastry chef to create his winning dish.

“I did a lot of recipe development before settling on this,” he says.

“I have a lot of different techniques, recipes and flavour combinations that I have been wanting to try but never got the opportunity to do so, as at the bakery I work on mainly pastry and cakes. The chance to present a plated dish is a great creative outlet.”

The Winnipegger will join the other Canada’s Great Kitchen Party regional winners in Ottawa on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, 2025, for the national competition.

“I know the best is yet to come, so I am trying to mentally prepare for Ottawa. My dish will have similar components to the Winnipeg one but I will be tweaking things slightly,” he says.

The national event will put 10 regional gold medallists through their paces across three competitions in order for one winner to be crowned Canadian Culinary Champion.

— Staff