There’s something to be said about growing up in a small town, especially when you win an award. For Elien De Herdt, who is currently a baker at Dutch Delicious in Edmonton, though she is originally from Barrhead, that means having her name displayed on business signs, plastered across social media platforms and having her picture in the paper.
Back in June, De Herdt journeyed to Argentina to participate in the Louis Lasaffre Cup, a baking competition that is held annually, as part of a team, and she had the distinction of being the first person chosen in all of Canada to compete in a brand-new Young Hopeful’s section, which for her was a great honour.
This year, the competition was a Children’s Birthday theme and for it, De Herdt explained, she made waffle pops. “Everything had to have yeast in it, so I adjusted the recipe and created a Mickey Mouse,” she added. Her entry won the Young Bakery Hopefuls Award for the Americas and earned De Herdt a place on the team’s next stop, this time in Paris, France. If there is another Young Hopeful’s section in Paris, De Herdt will be competing against only five people, instead of nine countries, and will be participating at the World level.
“It still seems surreal that this is happening,” she mused.
“The other members of the team are heading there and debating if there will be another Young Hopeful’s section,” she said. “They’re waiting on the other continents to compete but I’m still going as part of the team.”
“When I first got the call to compete, it came as a shock and I couldn’t believe it,” De Herdt explained, reflecting on the events leading up to the Cup. “It didn’t seem like it was a big deal when I first heard about it – it was just a competition – but as I started practicing for it, first by myself and then with my teammates, and also by following it on Facebook, I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually a huge event!’ and the excitement of it started to kick in.”
Coming away from the Cup however, De Herdt admitted that for all of the practice and preparation one does to get ready, at a competition, sometimes things can go wrong and you have to be able to fix them on the fly.
“You’ve got to be prepared to work hard for it,” she stressed. “I did lots of long days for this, working in the bakery from one to nine in the morning, then I would try and sleep for a couple of hours, before heading to school for six or seven hours, and the next day, I’d do it all over again.”
All those long hours helped though, De Herdt said, and explained that while she went to school for a year, she is half way through the two years required for her journeyman certification and is one step closer to attaining her goal of a Baker’s Red Seal. “I think that practicing is important and coming up with new ideas, being able to be inventive or creative, is a definite must.”
De Herdt said that the chance to work as part of a team on a national level was a great experience. “Being on the team and seeing all the other countries compete was amazing. Every country has their own way of doing things different than ours, and it was interesting to see that,” she added.
“We flew out of Edmonton to Toronto and from there, we stopped in Santiago, Chile, before heading on to our final destination which was Argentina,” she said. “It was 24 hours of travel time, all told, but at least it was only a three hour time difference, so I wasn’t too jet-lagged.”
De Herdt said the majority of her travel expenses and accommodations were provided for by sponsors such as Tips to Toes in Barrhead, Infopharm, Dutch Delicious in Edmonton and her parents’ own De Herdt Gardens, while her meals were taken care of by Team Canada. When asked about her parent’s reaction to the win, De Herdt said they are really proud of her accomplishments. “They actually came out to the airport to meet me when I landed and they had this huge Canadian flag with them,” she said. “My mom posted things on Facebook and she had some stuff on her big digital sign at De Herdt Gardens.”
Her employer too, no doubt, is pleased with having an awardwinning staff member.
“It’s kind of nice when you come from a small town where everybody knows you,” she admitted. “In a big city, I don’t think people would know me as well. I don’t go out much. Here, I can go to the IGA (Freson Bros.) and people know me.”
De Herdt plans on entering more competitions in the near future, one of which, Skills Canada, will be held in May 2016.
“Like I said earlier, I have one more year of hours to do to earn my journeyman baker’s certification, but after that, I think I will travel and bake, maybe in Belgium,” she said. “I’d love to go and learn more about chocolates and become a chocolateer.”
