About Me
I’m a former restaurant pastry chef with fifteen years’ experience who is obsessed with all things sweet and baked. During my pastry chef career, I liked to gussy up recipes to make them worthy of being served in a fine dining restaurant or at a party. As an example, I baked many pans of brownies. Then I carefully cut them into small squares, and after I decorated and fancied them up, I tucked them into pretty paper cases and sent them off to a party.
Simple recipes reflect my childhood in Oklahoma. In our family, Oklahoma baking was all about cakes and pies, cobblers, brownies, biscuits, cornbread, and of course, Grandma Draper’s chocolate cake that she baked in a roasting pan to feed the army of relatives who lived close by.
My mother taught me how to bake. The first thing I learned from her was how to make brownies. Both grandmas let me watch their kitchen magic and be their “helper.” They all had their specialties. Mother was a pie person and Grandma Anderson made the best tall flaky biscuits and strawberry shortcakes. Grandma Draper, besides her chocolate cakes, made white bread and buns every Friday. I learned to make many of these down-home and heart-warming desserts and breads that convey the nostalgia of simpler times.
After graduating college, I spent six months in Paris, where my passion for all things French was born; I became a complete Francophile and developed a life-long love affair with the cuisine, desserts, and all the beautiful pastries in the pâtisseries of France.
My road to a pastry career was long and winding. After Paris, I embarked on a career in fashion merchandising, which involved many buying trips, where we always dined well. Throughout my travels, dessert became my comfort—and then my passion.
Sandwiched between merchandising and baking, I went to cooking school at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), formerly Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School. I graduated with Blue Ribbon Honors.
My husband and I relocated to New England, to the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. This is where I spent my pastry chef career. My first job was at the Wheatleigh Hotel, a small luxury hotel near Lenox. Then I worked at The Old Inn On The Green in New Marlborough, a historic inn with a fine dining restaurant, that a long time ago was a stagecoach relay.
These two venues required upscale and glamourous desserts. Over time, my baking transformed from the plain and simple recipes I grew up with, to include more complex creations, sometimes with a French flair. There were desserts both posh and elegant, with beautiful decorative touches. In other words, fancier. But I held onto my simple recipes, finding that even in a fancy restaurant, people still wanted those too.
In this newsletter, I have developed most of the recipes myself. I have collected them from family, friends, pastry colleagues, professional pastry classes, and from cooking school. Even so, I like to adapt them to my own tastes. My bookshelves are weighed down with baking books and dessert books, so I get inspiration from them as well. This newsletter is an opportunity for me to share my recipes with you.
I will be writing from Port Saint Lucie, Florida, where I now live with my family and our three kitties: Chloe, Joey, and Teddy Bear.
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