Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Some peo­ple dis­cov­er their call­ing ear­ly in life. For Staci Bun­bury, there was nev­er any doubt.

“I al­ways knew I want­ed to bake since I was a lit­tle girl play­ing with my tea set and my kiss cakes,” she said.

What the Port-of-Spain-based bak­er could not have pre­dict­ed is that by age 33, she’d be a two-time Caribbean Bak­ing Awards ‘Best Cake De­sign­er’ win­ner.

Bun­bury claimed the ti­tle in con­sec­u­tive years, win­ning in 2025 and again in 2026.

“I’m not sure how but for the first time, I was nom­i­nat­ed. I guess some­one who knew about the com­pe­ti­tion nom­i­nat­ed me. So, I went to Tor­to­la last year, where I re­ceived the award for Best Cake De­sign­er. And this year, I was in Sint Maarten where I re­ceived the same award for the sec­ond time in a row,” she shared.

The Best Cake De­sign­er cat­e­go­ry fea­tured sev­en­teen nom­i­nees from Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Sint Mar­tin, Haiti, the Unit­ed States Vir­gin Is­lands, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Trinidad and To­ba­go. Win­ners were se­lect­ed through a com­bi­na­tion of judges’ scores and pub­lic vot­ing, with en­tries as­sessed for com­po­si­tion, colour, de­tail and cre­ativ­i­ty.

Bun­bury shared that stand­ing on stage ac­cept­ing the re­gion’s top bak­ing ho­n­our was the cul­mi­na­tion of a jour­ney that be­gan years ear­li­er in a Food and Nu­tri­tion class­room at Holy Faith Con­vent in Pe­nal.

“I re­al­ly de­vel­oped my love and pas­sion through do­ing Food and Nu­tri­tion. From there, I start­ed do­ing pop-up bak­ing, sell­ing cup­cakes and dif­fer­ent baked goods out the back of my par­ents’ car. Then I went to ho­tel school, and from there, I did culi­nary arts. There I re­alised that my pas­sion was re­al­ly in the bak­ing and the cakes and the sculpt­ing, just mak­ing art and mag­ic with my hands,” she re­called.

Since then, Bun­bury has built a rep­u­ta­tion through her busi­ness Ha­Lo Desserts, cre­at­ing elab­o­rate sculpt­ed cakes that push the bound­aries of cake de­sign.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Bun­bury said the cake that changed every­thing was not per­fect.

“A friend brought this de­sign to me, know­ing that I was artis­tic, and she said, I think you could make this. It was a three-tier cake, and it was noth­ing I ever did be­fore, be­cause I used to just do reg­u­lar, lit­tle, sim­ple cakes. Mind you, it was a to­tal mess. It was a pur­ple and black ze­bra-print­ed top­sy-turvy cake. So, she gave me quite the chal­lenge. But from there, I just re­alised that this was some­thing I like to cre­ate with my hands and sculpt. So, my one wonky cre­ation kind of spi­ralled in­to what it is now,” she rem­i­nisced.

That “wonky” cake marked the be­gin­ning of a port­fo­lio filled with in­creas­ing­ly am­bi­tious cre­ations. Since then, Bun­bury has sculpt­ed every­thing from drag­ons and Godzil­la to a Sepho­ra shop­ping bag and even a high-heel-topped cake.

“My favourite de­signs are def­i­nite­ly the drag­ons. I love sculpt­ing myth­i­cal crea­tures. I love the Alien ver­sus Preda­tor one, the Xenomorph, and Godzil­la. I just like mak­ing an­i­mat­ed crea­tures that you would see on the movie screen and kind of bring­ing them to life in cake. So you could eat it at the end of the day.” Bun­bury said.

But be­hind every in­tri­cate cre­ation is an even greater mo­ti­va­tion.

“My brand, Ha­Lo, is de­signed af­ter my kids’ names, Hai­ley and Lo­gan. My son is 13, and my daugh­ter is 14, go­ing on 15. They’ve been with me from the start, from eat­ing their lit­tle cake scraps to or­der­ing and de­sign­ing their own cakes for me to cre­ate. So, they’ve seen the growth as well. And I hope they’re very proud be­cause every­thing I do is for them,” she added.

Bun­bury shared that al­though win­ning back-to-back awards is a sur­re­al feel­ing, it has pushed her to be­come even bet­ter at what she does.

“I don’t think win­ning the awards changed me, but I think it mo­ti­vat­ed me to step my game up so that I’m con­stant­ly reach­ing to a space where peo­ple will be like, yeah, she re­al­ly is award-win­ning. Her work re­al­ly is worth it, and it de­serves to be seen,” she said.

For now, Bun­bury con­tin­ues to dream up more in­no­v­a­tive and quirky cre­ations, with a bodice or Greek sculp­ture pos­si­bly on her list.