Gluten-Free in San Diego: Christina Kantzavelos
Christina Kantzavelos will be speaking at the Nourished Festival Sunday February 10 at 1:30pm. Tickets available here.
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Made in San Diego: Artist Yu Kelsey’s Award-Winning Cakes at Coronado's Gluten-Free Pantry
Winning first place at San Diego’s 2019 Cake Show was not part of the plan for Yu Kelsey.
“I never thought about becoming a cake decorator, or working in a bakery. I actually had a dream of building movie sets,” she said.
Born in Tsukigase, a village outside of Kyoto, Japan, Kelsey was always interested in the arts, studying English for a year in Osaka before moving to California. She completed her BA at San Francisco University in Studio Arts, with a concentration in sculpting, ceramics and oil painting.
After graduation, Kelsey spent time interning on a movie sets, which made her realize that she was more interested in watching movies than making them.
Feeling a bit lost in terms of her career, Yu stumbled upon the show, Cake Boss. “It just hit me. I remember he was making an elaborate cake that could move, and I never saw a cake like that in Japan,” she explained, adding that she loved the fact that unlike conventional art, the end result was edible.
Photo 1: Yu Kelsey
Photo 2: Yu Kelsey
Serendipity found her when she ran into an old friend who introduced her to a pastry chef and bakery owner in San Francisco. As an intern, she quickly learned the ropes, and was officially hired soon after. A year later, she decided she wanted to add Japanese baking skills to her repertoire.
She moved to Nagoya, Japan to work for a French pastry chef and bakery owner who specialized in creating both French and Japanese pastries. She learned the intricacies of mousse and caterpillar cakes, before moving on to a bakery that focused specifically on wedding cakes and mini desserts, where she learned how to make Japanese-style wedding cakes, that used whipped cream to frost and design rather than the traditional buttercream.
Fate found her again when she reconnected with her college boyfriend, whom she’d broken things off with before she moved back to Japan. “I never thought I would see or talk to him again.” He was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, they reconnected, and those renewed sparks led them to get married.
When he was then transferred to Miramar, they came home together to San Diego where Yu worked for various bakeries before landing a full-time position at Coronado’s Gluten-Free Pantry in 2018.
Photo 1: Coronado’s Gluten-Free Pantry
Photo 2: Roanna, owner of Coronado’s Gluten-Free Pantry
Coronado’s Gluten-Free Pantry, created and run by baker, Roanna Cenete, is San Diego’s only gluten-free wholesaler of dessert, bread and specialty cakes.
Although Kelsey doesn’t have any food allergies or restrictions herself, she likes the challenge of working with gluten-free flours.
“I’ve learned a lot from working with Roanna. Not just about baking gluten-free, but customer service and leadership, too.”
Yu entered a Tyrion Lannister cake in San Diego Cake Show in March 2019. “I love Game of Thrones, and he is my favorite character from the show,” she explained.
Her first-ever baking competition entry ended up taking home first prize, while the Coronado’s Gluten-Free Pantry’s baking team cake she assisted with came in third.
“I love to make something unique and original that tastes good,” she said.
Her approach to cake making is similar to her approach to building a set or creating a piece of fine art. She researches and compiles photos to reference for every angle, and she scales all the features before building. She uses ganache to glue cake into layers that can be carved and sculpted and mixes cake and ganache to use like clay for molding. Chocolate serves as her paint.
Yu plans to enter more cake competitions in the future, and hopes to one day own a custom cake bakery. “Seeing a customers face when they get the cake they dream of makes it all worth it.”
Order your own gluten-free masterpiece from Coronado’s Gluten-Free Pantry
See all of Yu’s cake creations on Instagram @yukelseycakes
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