Cake Bake Shoppe

Tanya Pridge switched tracks from physio to frosting in pursuing her dream of opening her own bakeshop. She opened the aptly named Cake Bake Shoppe in McKenzie Towne in November 2013 and has been mixing up moist, butter-creamy magic ever since. Pridge was never much for the kitchen growing up, but after taking cake baking and decorating courses with her dad as a teen, she developed a knack for it.

Pridge was headed for a career in physiotherapy, but in her third year of university realized she just wasn’t all that jazzed about it. “I wanted to do something more creative,” she says. She enrolled in the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, garnering a diploma in baking and pastry arts. After working in a Kelowna bakery and a cupcake shop, she returned to Calgary and worked a non-baking day job while doing custom cakes on the side for friends and family.