Interestingly enough, when I started my career, I had baked no more than the average person.

However, New York City, my home town, was filled with top notch bakeries and those are the desserts that my discerning parents brought home for me, endowing me with highly developed desert tastebuds as well as an unbridled passion for eating baked goods.

Although, apparently, my great Grandmother on my Mother’s side was a Master baker in Czechoslovakia, I learned to bake completely through trial and error when testing recipes. The more I baked, the more I learned about the chemistry of baking: mistakes became stepping stones, opportunities to learn more about the impact of each ingredient on the end result, thus giving me a greater understanding of the chemistry of baking and consequently more control over the end result. Honestly there were recipes that I must have tested up to 25 times before I could check them off as perfect. Usually it was a minor adjustment of a particular ingredient that could have a major affect on the outcome. So do not be disheartened when you err; like anything in life, we learn from our mistakes in future endeavors.

I had absolutely no idea that I was destined to be a baker.

I had left my bourgeois New York City, rather sheltered home to go to college int UC Berkeley a hotbed of political radicalism. I arrived there at the tail end of the Free Speech movement and the beginning of the psychedelic era. It was the age of the Fillmore Theater with its psychedelic posters, Jimmy Hendrix, The Beatles, the onset of marijuana brownies and the formation of the Black Panthers. It was quite an education in life and I threw myself into the experience paying no attention to what my career goals might be.

Fast forward, finding the lack of true seasons kind of monotonous and having no real career goals my parents (somewhat panicked that I had become a hippy radical), suggested perhaps that I would transition well back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sharing some similarities to the west coast mentality. So I got a job as a waitress at the Blue Parrot cafe in Harvard Square, at the time a very hip place with lots of interesting patrons, many of whom were students and professors at Harvard University. Here I discovered that I was very talented in waitressing and most importantly loved it! Relating to customers, choreographing my movements so as to be the most efficient and grace waitress I could be. I loved the social interaction and the guys I could flirt with. I loved being around food and seeing the joy and social interaction that came from being in that environment.

My parents however were concerned; waitressing as an end goal for an upper middle class Jewish girl (and only child) from New York, who had been sent to private school and given everything, had to reach higher. So they suggested graduate school to get a Masters in Teaching just as a security measure, in case nothing else ever came to fruition. Off to Tufts I went for a boring Masters of Teaching and an eventual repressive experience doing my student teaching at a Boston Public School where the last thing they wanted from me was a creative approach to teaching; however, I got the Masters and my parents were happy. So I moved on and up to waitressing at the Orson Wells Restaurant in Cambridge. This is where avocado, sprout and tomato sandwiches on home made whole grain bread were introduced to the Cambridge Market, along with many other healthy offerings that California had been experiencing for years…. I loved working there, met lots of totally interesting coworkers and customers and made great tips.

I had started doing some psychedelic pen and ink drawings on my own when I wasn’t working and decided I might have some artistic talent (my father was a talented painter). My mother, my father and I I went EVERY WEEKEND to New York’s museums and galleries to “educate” me. So I decided that drawing was something I really enjoyed, I enrolled at the Boston Museum School, continued to waitress and expanded my Masters in teaching to include teaching Art as well. However, I went back to waitressing and my parents were still anxious about my future!

The following Valentines, my girlfriend Mimi (who was also an artist) and I decided to bake some heart shaped sugar cookies and decorate them lavishly with non-edible embellishments to sell in local Cambridge galleries and boutiques. I brought mine around and decided as well to bring some to Baby Watson Cheesecake Bakery in Harvard Square. Apparently they sold immediately and the next day I got a call from the owner Peter asking me what else I could bake.

And so began my baking career.

I went home, started testing recipes with the end goal to get them to taste like the desserts I had grown up with. I brought them in to the store and people were buying them like crazy. When I got there each morning around 10:30 there were literally a line of people waiting for my baked goods. After that, there was no stopping me and I finally found my calling in addition to falling on love with Peter who owed Baby Watson Cheesecake and was born the SAME DAY and the SAME YEAR as I was!! We built a new and bigger Bakery in the Garage in Harvard Square with my kitchen behind glass for all to see me baking. That was the beginning of a 40 year career and PARENTS WHO COULD NOT HAVE BEEN HAPPIER. As time went on, I opened my own bakeries, baking and retailing along with my second husband Eliot who took care of all the business and gave me the freedom to be creative.

The moral of the story is: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!! Now let’s get down to baking!