When Liam Harrap first heard about The Great Canadian Baking Show he dropped everything to fill out an application.
Season 1 aired in 2017. Harrap was in Ottawa working on his Master’s Degree at the time and living in an apartment that had only a toaster oven.
READ MORE: Revelstoke’s Liam Harrap is competing on The Great Canadian Baking Show
For the auditions that year he baked pistachio, orange, sourdough cinnamon buns with lavender, lime, cream cheese glaze. He had to get up at 3 a.m. to drive his creations to Montreal to present them to the judges.
“Don’t make the excuse that all you have is a toaster oven, you can still audition for a baking show with a toaster oven,” Harrap said with a laugh.
He didn’t make it on the show the first year, or the second year when he baked a sourdough carrot cake with ginger, lime, cream cheese frosting, decorated with pecan tear drops, candied lime, candied curled carrots and marzipan shaped carrots.
It was a third time’s the charm situation, or perhaps his dad’s advice to stay away from sourdough creations lest they think he couldn’t make anything else, when the call came for Harrap to appear on the show.
This time around he had prepared a festive duck, pork and egg hand-raised pie, topped with cranberries and served with kiwi, banana, chili chutney, beat and orange chutney and homemade mustard, for the audition.
With George the pie buckled in the passenger seat, Harrap drove from Revelstoke, where he works as a reporter at the Revelstoke Review, to Edmonton to once again present his creation to the judges.
Three weeks later, as he was sitting in his car at the Sunshine Village parking lot in Banff he received the call from the producers.
Things moved quickly from there and soon Harrap was borrowing every cook book there was from the Revelstoke public library and bringing cakes and cookies to work every day, all the while somehow managing to keep the secret that he had made it on the show.
In May, Harrap travelled to Toronto for filming. Season 3 premiered on Sept. 18, the episodes can be watched on CBC.
Three episodes have aired so far, Cake Week, Biscuit Week and Bread Week. Old School Week will be airing Oct. 9. Spoiler alert, as of Bread Week Harrap is still on the show.
READ MORE: New farmer joins the Revelstoke market scene
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