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Prince William Times | March 23, 2023
Baking up a dream
Kettle Run grad, an executive pastry chef, appears on national baking show By Ashley Simpson
Special to the Fauquier Times
As professional chef April Franqueza approached her Kettle Run High School graduation in 2010, she wasn’t like her classmates who were preparing for their next four years at a college or university. She didn’t know what she wanted to do – or what colleges she was interested in – so she took a year-long break to plot her next move. Then, that summer, her dad passed away following a battle with cancer. But he left his daughter with some enlightening words. “One of the last things my dad said before he passed away was, ‘You should go to the Culinary Institute of America,’ and that led me to apply and go there,” Franqueza, 30, said in a recent interview. “And that ended up really being my place.” It all makes sense when Franqueza looks back at her childhood, when many of her favorite memories involved cooking and baking. Still, she said she didn’t seriously consider becoming a chef until her dad’s words sunk in. “Going through a parent’s death at such a young age really changes your perspective in life,” she said. “My younger brother was 14 at the time, and I didn’t want to leave him. I stayed at home for a year and worked at a local pastry shop.” That experience helped Franqueza qualify for admission to the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, which set her future course. Now, she is the executive pastry chef at High Hampton Inn, a renowned and luxury historical estate in Jackson County, North Carolina, and a participant on the current season of The Food Network’s reality show, “Spring Baking Championship.” As viewers of “Spring Baking Championship” might hear April say on the show, her life would likely have been totally different had her father not encouraged her to pursue a dream along a competitive, difficult path. “Otherwise, I would have gone to a normal college,” she said. “But one day, my dad came home with all these papers about the Culinary Institute,
April Franqueza prepares a dish for the show.
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April Franqueza, a 2010 graduate of Kettle Run High School, on the set of The Food Network’s “Spring Baking Championship.” and then a year later it all worked out. … Look where it got me. It drew the course of my life.” “I oversee the entire pastry function, helping make anything we serve,” Franqueza said of her job at High Hampton Inn. “We do all of our baking – all bread, pastries, cookies, you name it – in house. We make everything. I write the menus and the recipes. It’s a lot, but it’s seriously my dream job. I still get to do baked goods, but I also do plated desserts and get to experience restaurant life.” Franqueza’s husband, Scott, whom she met at the CIA, also works at the inn as a chef. Franqueza comes up with every dessert menu, which always consists of four different options and rotates every three days. She said she loves the opportunity to be innovative and creative and has a running list of ideas and ingredients on her cell phone for whenever an idea for a new dessert combination or concept comes to mind. While Franqueza loves cooking all kinds of dishes, she said she has always been drawn to pastries – from pies to cakes to croissants. “I do love cooking savory food, but pastry is my first love,” Franqueza said. “Our days at High Hampton Inn are 11 to 12 hours, and every day is fun. The act of making something that you know someone is not going to eat every day is so satisfying. I make sure nothing goes into production unless it’s the best it can be, and I love that these desserts and baked goods can be so special to people. When people tell me the fresh bread reminds me of their grandmother’s, it touches my soul.” Franqueza’s desserts have clearly touched a lot of people. She and Scott have been invited to bake and cook on “The Today Show” twice over the last two years. “The first time, ‘The Today Show’ was looking for chefs for a New Year’s segment last year, and Scott’s and my anniversary is New Year’s, so it was special timing,” Franqueza said. “The producers asked if we would do a special demo. I made a s’mores dessert for New Year’s Eve and then cinnamon rolls for New Year’s brunch. Then, they asked us to come back for a similar segment for Valentine’s Day this year.” So, Franqueza was no stranger to television when The Food Network sent a message to her on Instagram about participating on Season 9 of “Spring Baking Championship.” “This wasn’t the first time they had asked me to participate, but it was the first time that my
Watch “Spring Baking Championship” on The Food Network on Mondays at 8 p.m. schedule allowed me to be away for long enough to film, which takes four weeks,” she explained. “There were 12 competitors, and each season lasts 10 episodes. When I arrived in Knoxville, Tennessee, to film, I didn’t know anything about my fellow competitors, so from the beginning, I was a big ball of nerves.” Throughout the competition, the bakers had a set amount of time to prepare desserts that adhered to the theme: Love. This was all too appropriate, considering the host was Jesse Palmer, the host of “The Bachelor.” “There were three judges and eliminations for each episode,” Franqueza said. “What’s really hard is, let’s say you have 90 minutes to do something, and you forget to do something or make one small mistake when rushing. Then, while you wait to be judged, all you can do is think back on what you did and why you aren’t proud of it – how you could have done it better. And then you have to sit through the judging process, which can just be brutal when you know you didn’t deliver the best you could.” Being a part of the competition meant withstanding a lot of pressure, but Franqueza said she was glad she got the experience. “It definitely made me recognize which areas I need to work on,” she said. “I definitely found myself saying multiple times, ‘Wow, I haven’t made this in 10 years.” Franqueza said her advice to people who have the urge to pursue dreams outside the norm is to be their own biggest cheerleader and to surround themselves with others who cheer for their success. “I really think that believing in yourself – and understanding that anything is possible – is key to realizing even the craziest of dreams,” she said. “At the same time, you have to expect that things are going to be hard – but not impossible – especially when you have a great team in your corner. “If you had told me when I was 18 that I’d be going to the CIA, going to France and Spain to cook and study culinary culture, and then eventually be on The Food Network, I wouldn’t have believed it,” she added. “And, that all happened by the time I turned 30. I can’t even fathom what can happen in the next 10 years.”
