Hi! I’m Coleen. Let’s get baking!
Yes, I really am a trained pastry chef. I graduated from pastry school with honors and an Associate degree in the pastry arts. I really enjoyed culinary school, and I still love to bake. I just hate baking 6 rolling racks of gingerbread men and decorating them all the exact same way, or lugging 50-pound bags of flour to a mixer that I could fit inside.
I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and now live just outside the city with my husband, Dave; our son, Liam; and our rescue dog Ollie (and the occasional foster dog for Home At Last Rescue).
I also have a Bachelor degree in graphic design, and that is my day job. I also serve on the board of my community’s art alliance, bringing our community together through art installations, celebrations and markets. I also collect hobbies like making stickers out of my digital drawings, watercolor painting, crocheting, knitting, and I have mastered none of them.
Why I Started this Blog
When I was around 10 years old, I appointed myself the family baker. Mostly, I made everybody’s birthday cakes.
The first time I tried, though, the cake fell apart when I tried to remove it from the pan. Turns out, when the instructions say, “Mix on low for 30 seconds, then on high for 2 minutes,” you can’t mix on low for 30 seconds and think, “Looks blended enough to me,” and pop it in the oven.
Later on, I enrolled in culinary school. After graduating, I worked a few years in the food service industry — in fine dining, a bread bakery, and a wholesale bakery — and hated all of them. OK, I didn’t hate baking. I hated baking six rolling racks of gingerbread men and decorating all of them the exact same way. And so, I quit.
But I still wanted to bake. I started this blog to catalog recipes I tried, adapted for my own, or developed myself. I discovered that I could help others become more confident home bakers by sharing the why behind the how, and hopefully helping you avoid the mistakes I made when I first started baking.