Calgary baker crafts gingerbread houses for Jann Arden’s TV holiday special

Tanya Kaynes likes to call her work edible art.

Kaynes is the head curator of Menagerie Parties and Cakes—a business she started four years ago.

After spending almost 20 years as the event manager and development officer at the Calgary Zoo, Kaynes decided it was time to follow her passion.

While continuing to plan events and parties, Kaynes has added baking into the mix.

“I started [the business] out of a love of baking and making people happy. That’s my favourite thing in the world is making people happy. And I do that with food,” Kaynes says.

Creating works of edible art

Menagerie Parties and Cakes specializes in 3D sculpted cakes.

Artistic skills run in Kaynes’ family.

“I inherited it from my grandfather, who was an artist. And he was very, very amazing at graphic arts,” she says, adding she also used art often in her event planning career, designing props for parties.

As for her baking skills, Kaynes is self-taught.

“I did not go to school for culinary anything. I just obsessively watch baking shows,” she says, adding she’s honed her craft over the years with a lot of trial and error.

Appearances on the small screen

Kaynes went on to appear on some of the baking shows she spent countless hours watching.

She was an assistant to a fellow cake designer on the first season of The Big Bake: Best In Snow on the Food Network.

Kaynes has also made it to the final round of auditions for CBC’s The Great Canadian Baking Show four times and she dreams of competing in the Food Network’s Halloween Baking Championship.

Her edible art has appeared as bullets and cakes for the Netflix show Black Summer, and she’s made a wedding cake and Parisian picnic for a pair of Hallmark movies.

“I have a friend that’s in the movie industry and he connected me with a prop master about three years ago,” Kaynes says.

Crafting gingerbread houses for an icon

It was that contact who gave Kaynes’ name to the people behind Jann: Alone for the Holidays.

The Christmas special—which aired on CTV this past Friday—featured some of Kaynes’ mouth-watering creations.

“I had to do 10 gingerbread houses at varying stages of completion, plus two complete, decorated ones because they were going to smash them on the floor. So they had to be identical in every way,” Kaynes says.

“Then I did all the cookies, the yule log, all of the Christmas baking on set. It was so, so fun.”

It was a quick turnaround time as Kaynes only had about a week to have everything ready.

“It was insane. Eat, drink, sleep, gingerbread,” she laughs, adding she spent about 80 hours over six days crafting the baked goods for the show.

Leaving a lasting impression

The hard work paid off.

While Kaynes did not get to go to the set of Jann: Alone for the Holidays, she was pretty chuffed to hear that Arden took two of the gingerbread houses home for Christmas.

Kaynes says it felt great to see her work on the show.

“I’m a typical artist, I’m always second-guessing myself… But then when I saw it on screen, I’m like, oh, that actually really looked good,” she says.

“All the gaudiness that they wanted really came through. And then the more refined one, yeah, I was really happy with how it looked.”

Hoping for more on-screen appearances

Kaynes is grateful for the support from the community that has kept her busy since opening her business.

“Even during COVID, I was making cakes, and people were picking it up with no contact, that sort of thing,” she says.

As for the future, Kaynes hopes to keep making people happy with her food and maybe get a few more on-screen appearances.

“Anything that anyone asks me to do, the answer’s yes. Because you just never know where it’s going to lead you,” she says.

“And I have this dream that I want to be famous. I want some notoriety for what I do and my creativity.”