Chris Hedlund is a Brazilian-born Canadian, owner and the artist behind Berliosca Cake Boutique in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Chris started baking for family and friends when she was nine years old, inspired by Madame Berliosca, but not until late 2006 she realized that in order to become a cake lady she didn’t have wait until retirement of the business world. So after moving to Vancouver, building on her childhood hobby of cake-crafting, Chris started sculpting creative cakes and has been honing her skills ever since in her cake boutique.

Chris is a self-taught baker and that is why getting great reviews about the taste of her cakes rock her world.

She studied sugarcraft with internationally renowned cake designer Marcela Sanchez and had the privilege to be the Portuguese-English interpreter to amazing cake artists such as Mike Elder, Tony Warren, Nhora de La Pava when teaching in Brazil.

Who is Madame Berliosca?

Madame Berliosca is the vanilla-scented cake lady who inspired nine-year-old Chris to make cakes.

She is a fictional character in a children’s book called Grimble, written in 1968 by Clement Freud. Grimble was originally written in English so her actual name is Madame Beryl later translated in the Brazilian edition of the book to Madame Berliosca.

 “… he went downstairs and looked at the list of names. The last name was Madame Beryl’s cake-shop.

Madame Beryl was a friend of his mother who sometimes called and talked to her about self-raising flour and currant loaves. She was a very fat lady who smelt of vanilla essence. Grimble had once gone into the bathroom and found Madame Beryl standing on the scales and the pointer on the and the pointer on the scales pointed to Jones and Co., which is just after 16 stones, all the way round from 1 stone.”