BAKING
Pollen Basket
I launched my food business in 2022, selling baked goods at farmers markets around NJ. Pollen Basket celebrates the role pollinators play in the foods we eat by highlighting ingredients that are dependent on or benefit from pollinators. Its mission is to explore and foster relationships between people and pollinators through food.
We aim to educate customers, inspire an interest and thoughtfulness about our connections to the natural world, and support those working in conservation, environmental justice, land stewardship, and food sovereignty. Follow on Instagram (@pollenbasketcafe) for more!
Honeykeep
In 2019, I started the first iteration of my entrepreneurial food career with Honeykeep and its honey-inspired desserts. It was an exploration of the different flavors of honey that bees make, which varies depending on their floral source, location, and season.
Bees became a passion of mine after attending some honey tastings, taking a season-long beekeeping course, and learning about the connection between pollinators and our food. I sold a selection of sweets at my first two markets: light and fluffy Honey Roll Cakes, satisfyingly chewy Honey Peanut Butter Cookies, creamy Whipped Honey Mascarpone Bon Bons, and Orange Blossom Leche Flan inspired by my great grandmother. Both markets were hosted by The Cosmos in Brooklyn. Later that year, I was asked to demonstrate my Orange Blossom Leche Flan to an audience of a couple hundred people at the New York Botanical Garden’s Honey & Harvest Weekend. That one ranks quite high amongst my most exciting and proudest moments!
I designed the logo and branding on a very tight timeline in order to be ready for my first market but was quite happy with how it turned out. One of the important takeaways I wanted people to have was some gained knowledge or appreciation of bees. I designed the business cards so that the backs of each would be printed with one of 50 different facts about bees, so every customer could learn something new.
Gingerbreeds - 2018
I love baking and decorating gingerbread for the holidays every year, but I think this batch deserves a gallery of its own. I iced a few dozen different dog breeds on gingerbread (“Gingerbreeds” if you will), some modeled after my favorite Instagram dogs and the precious companions in my personal life.
Miscellaneous Food
Here you’ll find other cookies I’ve done in past years, a No-Face pumpkin that I had a lot of fun carving with a Dremel, a gingerbread house modeled after the Bob’s Burgers house/restaurant, and a lattice pie from an ambitious Thanksgiving.
