Marie Porter

Marie Porter (nee Marie Routhier) is a Canadian-born food writer now living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A descendant of Adolphe-Basile Routhier, who wrote the original French lyrics to "O Canada", she grew up in a poor, single mom family. At eleven years old, she learned to sew her own skating costumes. Then she moved onto formal and bridal fashion design, until she lost interest.

Sportswear design
After she suffered a car accident while living in Newfoundland, she returned to her original love of spandex costuming. At 24 years old, she had clients including pro wrestlers, champion bodybuilders, and some Olympic athletes and medalists. She was the official costume sponsor of Synchro Swim Ontario in 2002. One year later, the Canadian national synchronized swimming team sported Routhiers’ designs at 2003 Pan Am Games, where they captured the silver medal.

Routhier created the new "Unbashedly Canadian" line of maple leaf / Canadian Flag theme swimwear. She cited the scarcity of Canadian-themed fashion as her inspiration, contrasting it with the ease of availability of clothing featuring the Union Jack or Stars and Stripes. Despite its popularity, the "Unbashedly Canadian" line was discontinued on December 31, 2004, to support Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams's fight against Prime Minister Paul Martin over the issue of resource royalties. Williams had removed the Canadian flag from all Newfoundland government buildings.

Cake design
At the age of 25, Routhier became disillusioned with her career in designing spandex clothing. The long hours of filling orders and designing clothing led to burnout and boredom. She moved into floral design for events, then onto cake decorating.

She was honored with the Excellence in Cake Design award at the Twin City Bridal Association show in 2008. One of her cakes, a TARDIS design, was presented backstage at a w00tstock show in Minneapolis in June 2010. Wil Wheaton blogged about the event and professed his excitement.

Author
As of 2012, she is now publishing books. Routhier, now married and known as Marie Porter, has recently re-released the book Spandex Simplified: Synchro Swimwear which was originally published in 2004. On May 22, 2011, her house was heavily damaged in the tornado that hit north Minneapolis. She wrote about her experiences with rebuilding and her frustrations with city government in the book Twisted: A Minneapolis Tornado Memoir. In the process of rebuilding, she and her husband Michael got the idea to represent the digits of pi as black and white tiles in the backsplash above the kitchen counters. The backsplash was featured in a WCCO-TV report, "What Is Pi?", on March 14, 2012.

MasterChef
On April 30, 2013, it was announced that Marie Porter would appear in the premiere of Season 4 of the Fox TV series MasterChef.

Books

 * The Spirited Baker: Intoxicating Desserts & Potent Potables (ISBN 978-0984604005, 2010)
 * Evil Cake Overlord: Ridiculously Delicious Cakes (ISBN 978-0-9846040-4-3, 2nd edition 2012)
 * Twisted: A Minneapolis Tornado Memoir (ISBN 978-0-9846040-9-8, 2012)
 * Spandex Simplified: Synchro Swimwear (ISBN 978-0-9850036-1-6, 2012)
 * Spandex Simplified: Sewing for Skaters (ISBN 978-0-9850036-2-3, 2012)
 * Spandex Simplified: Sewing for Gymnasts (ISBN 978-0-9850036-3-0, 2013)