Wardroom cook finds recipe for sweet success

Jennifer Kingston, owner of Kingston Cake Craft and Bakery.

Peter Mallett
Staff Writer
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When not cooking healthy meals at the Wardroom, Jennifer Kingston is in her home micro-bakery creating custom cakes and pastries for clients.

The base foods employee owns Kingston Cake Craft and Bakery, a small profitable business that feeds her creativity.

“When people ask me why I love to bake so much I tell them that’s my passion. The natural world is full of beauty and replicating it in sugar has been a great source of happiness for me.”  

Her most recent cake was for Fleet Maintenance Facility Cape Breton’s 25th anniversary small, physically distanced get together. The 18” x 24” vanilla cake was filled with Bavarian cream. She handcrafted the special logo out of gum paste for a 3D effect, and meticulously cut out and placed laurel leaves, numbers, and letters from fondant as part of the decoration. “It was a real showpiece,” says Ashley Evans, one of the organizers of the event.

“The reason I love making cakes and baking is to see the satisfaction and joy it gives people,” says Kingston. “When someone looks at one of my cakes and gets excited it reminds me that, while you can’t buy happiness, you can buy cake.”

She is a red seal certified cook and Camosun College culinary program graduate, starting her career at CFB Esquimalt 21 years ago.  She has also worked alongside the talented chefs and cooks at the Dominion Hotel, Laurel Point Inn, and The Delta Ocean Pointe. When Swedish Bakery owner Ingmar retired, Kingston stepped in as head cake decorator. It eventually closed and she inherited many of the bakery’s fundamental tools such as cake pans, boxes, and molds. This gave her the tools needed to get her small business up and running. Her home kitchen is Capital Regional District certified.

“My dad was the one in the family with the true passion for cooking and taught me to admire, love, and respect food,” says Kingston. “He always seemed to have a crock pot in his vehicle when he was on his way to work and would be constantly baking fresh biscuits, soups and stews for people to eat in the office.”

The “office” was somewhere on a base in Canada, as he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Unused bits of cake and cream are often enjoyed by her daughter Eeva and husband PO1 Ryan Kingston, the Senior Instructor for Naval Combat Information Operators at Naval Fleet School (Pacific).

To see more of her work, go to www.weddingcakesvictoria.ca

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