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Turner Valley cook among the top five

The pressure is building for a Turner Valley resident who has made it into the top five on a popular reality television cooking show.

The pressure is building for a Turner Valley resident who has made it into the top five on a popular reality television cooking show.

April Lee Baker is one of five home cooks left vying for the title of Canada’s next MasterChef and a $100,000 prize in the third season of CTV’s MasterChef Canada. The next episode airs May 29.

The season began last winter with 40 contestants from across Canada being guided and mentored by judges Michael Bonacini, Alvin Leung and Claudio Aprile through a grueling series of challenges.

“My stress level was going up,” said Baker of the last few weeks of filming, which took place last fall. “It went from feeling that opportunity to showcasing myself to I really want to win this. I was definitely sinking my feet in deeper.”

The most recent episode, aired on May 8, had the six remaining contestants in teams of woman versus men preparing dishes in an upscale Asian restaurant owned by judge Leung and season one winner Eric Chong.

“It was a big challenge,” said Baker. “It makes it look easy to man that wok. It was heavy and hot. It was like a dance.”

Baker is a homemaker who lives on a hobby farm outside of Turner Valley and grows her own food. Her dream is to one day own her own restaurant with its own garden and livestock.

Baker initially applied for a spot on the second season of MasterChef Canada in 2014.

“I’m a huge fan of the show,” she said. “I just loved the fact that people at home can really take a passion and a hobby and elevate it and just produce outstanding food that comes from the heart. I’m competitive and I thought this was something that would be able to showcase my cooking skills and help me grow and maybe open my own restaurant.”

Baker received an email informing her she didn’t make the cut, but encouraged her to apply again for season three in the summer of 2015.

“I spent the year getting myself ready - just really honing in on my cooking skills and style,” she said. “I had that joy of cooking, but I didn’t know what kind of style I had.”

Baker created a video of herself walking around her property last summer, showing her hobby farm and her cooking skills in her kitchen, with a focus on comfort foods. Baker joined the other 39 contestants in Toronto last fall to film the show over two months.

“It was long days,” she said. “There wasn’t a great amount of down time, but we were all cohabiting together. Even on set we were talking about food and our favourite dishes and favourite places to shop.”

In the first episode, Baker was one of four contestants to earn the white apron with her signature dish of pan-seared duck breast with a honey sauce from her own hive at home.

Episode after episode, she continued to impress the judges.

“I felt pretty confident,” she said. “I felt I had prepared myself and I was ready for it. Facing the judges for the first time was extremely daunting. I wanted to impress them and I certainly did.”

Six contestants were cut at the end of the first episode and another one to two each episode that followed, said Baker.

“It was like, wow this is going to be a really wild competition,” she said. “We are all great cooks. It was hard to see people going home just for simple mistakes.”

The challenges the contestants faced ranged from making sausage to creating dishes with ingredients available to astronauts.

“I love to take something that isn’t fancy and maybe make it into something that makes people go wow,” she said.

Baker said she got her start in cooking through the foods program at Foothills Composite School and soon found herself doing a lot of cooking as a teen.

“I was a rebellious teenager, so I was living at my friend’s house,” she said. “She and I took over cooking when her mom was diagnosed with MS and her dad worked out of town in the oil patch. I realized how wonderful it was for us to eat as a family and take that time together.”

Now a mother of two, Baker spends many hours in the kitchen preparing impressive dishes for her own family.

“They are great eaters and they are experimental and never shy away from something,” she said of her children.

With a husband who hunts, Baker is never without a variety of foods to prepare including a variety of soups, stews, breads and pastas. Since returning home last November, Baker has had to keep the show’s final results a secret from friends, family and strangers.

“People try to trick me all the time,” she said. “I’m used to it now. I love every week being able to share the show with everyone.”

Baker is now working an apprenticeship at Charbar in Calgary.

“I’m loving it,” she said. “It’s great to get back in the workforce and doing something I love so much.”

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