One morning Eileen Vanderpool awoke to the sound of grease crackling in the pan and the smell of eggs frying. She thought it was her husband cooking breakfast, but when she took a look in the kitchen, there was her five-year-old daughter, cooking up her favourite meal, fried eggs with cheese. Mom didn’t know whether to laugh or scold.“That’s when we got our first inkling that cooking was going to be her passion,” said Mrs Vanderpool.Joliza Vanderpool is now 18 and her passion for cooking has only grown. She just finished her first year in a culinary arts programme at Niagara College in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada and won a scholarship from the Hospitality Endowment Fund from the Royal Caribbean, in cooperation with the Department of Tourism, for the second year in a row.The Royal Gazette recently visited the Vanderpool home where Miss Vanderpool was making up an ambitious (and delicious looking) cold lemon souffle in a chocolate teardrop. It seemed a great Cup Match crowd pleaser, but may be challenging for less experienced home chefs.“I watched my parents in the kitchen,” said Miss Vanderpool. “My mother use to bake. She got that from her mother. My grandmother, Rosalie Best, went to school to learn cake making, so it just trickled down the line. I enjoy it.”Though Miss Vanderpool enjoys cooking in general, she really likes making pastry.“Pastry takes a lot of patience,” she said. “You have to make sure that everything is precise. It is better to do stuff in a quiet place, otherwise, sometimes when you are in the kitchen there are a lot of distractions around you. I enjoy making cakes the most. Even though it is time consuming, at the end of whatever it is I am making, I can say ‘this is great, I did that’. It is also a great feeling to see another person’s facial reaction when they see their cake for the first time.”In high school she built up quite a reputation as a cake maker. She won an award for cake decorating two years in a row at the Annual Exhibition, and teachers and friends would frequently ask her to make cakes for special events. She did it for free for awhile, before she had to start charging due to the cost of ingredients and travel and so forth.She first started thinking about the culinary arts as a career while taking the family studies programme at the Spice Valley Middle (now TN Tatem Middle School), and this was further cemented in a similar programme at CedarBridge Academy. She graduated from CedarBridge in 2010.“My year in college has confirmed that the culinary arts is what I want to do,” she said. “I enjoyed everything that I did while in my labs.”It has also helped to bring home some grown up realities that aren’t always obvious to junior chefs, like the cost of ingredients in the supermarket.“Four weeks ago, I was going to do a risotto with saffron and the only thing that stopped me was two of the ingredients combined cost $40,” she said. “I had previously made it in a lab in college. I didn’t know that saffron was an expensive ingredient until I went to purchase it. It was upsetting because I wanted to show my parents and let them taste it, because I thoroughly enjoyed it.”She has held a number of summer jobs and internships, including at Blu Bar & Grill at Belmont Hills Golf Course, working with pastry. One summer she also worked at the Tucker’s Point Club in the kitchen, and this summer, she is working at Coco Reef Resort on the lunch and dinner line.“I hope to one day own my own restaurant and have my own bakery,” Miss Vanderpool said. “I am also interested in wine-making. I chose my college because it has its own vineyard on campus. Wines are made and sold there. It is the only fully licensed teaching winery in Canada.”She is currently in an associates programme but hopes to go on and get her bachelor’s degree in hospitality management. She would also like to take the viticulture programme at Niagara College, and she is interested in teaching.For some tips on making souffles, see the website: http://dessert.lifetips.com/cat/57571/souffles/index.html . For more information about Niagara College, see the website: http://www.niagaracollege.ca.