Great Canadian Baking Show runner-up Jen Childs brings whimsical creativity to cookies, cakes and choux pastries.

There were the macarons shaped like llamas, the two-sided cake shadow box filled with a cookie undersea garden and that evil technical challenge in the finale, when she had just over two hours to create a cake featuring choux pastries filled with lemon curd and crème chiboux, then dipped in caramel and arranged between lemon-sugar-cookie rings.
Victoria’s Jen Childs handily whipped up those bakes and more, bringing serious creative talent to the tent on Season 8 of CBC’s The Great Canadian Baking Show. In fact, she made it all the way to last November’s finale, which judges Bruno Feldeisen and Kyla Kennaley admitted was among the closest they’d ever assessed.
“It’s so fun. I love to make things. Even in high school I made a replica of our house in gingerbread,” says Childs, who is a bookkeeper and mother of three as well as a passionate amateur baker. She describes herself as “equal parts dorky, sporty and creative” and notes, “Being on the show really satisfied all of that.”
Mind you, getting to the tent where the show is filmed was no cakewalk. Childs had applied every year since the show was announced back in 2017, when Victoria’s Jude Somers competed. Every year since then, Childs would prep for the audition in what her family called “baking season.” She laughs: “It was a self-imposed workshop every year.”
In March 2024 she got word that she’d made the cut and then had about five weeks to work on her bakes, fine-tune her recipes and figure out what the heck she was going to wear on air.
She quickly became known for a kind of whimsical creativity executed with meticulous skill and precision — she was named star baker three times and runner-up overall, and says it was “absolutely worthwhile” waiting all those years to compete.
Next she’s planning to teach some baking classes and occasionally take on the kind of over-the-top commissions she loves best.
And she’s definitely going to keep baking. “We flew back from Toronto [after filming ended] and I baked something that night,” she says. She made macarons. Of course.
Watch The Great Canadian Baking Show on CBC Gem.