Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So this is part two of our interview. If you missed the first half, feel free to go back and have a listen. You mentioned earlier that you, you'd always worked, so what did you do professionally?
[00:00:09] Speaker B: So professionally I worked for a utility company. Well, I went to college. I went to Temple University in Philadelphia. Well, actually first I started out at a community college just to save, save money.
And eventually I transferred off to, you know, more traditional four year institute in Temple University, which is where I met Tim, interestingly enough, in Philadelphia. It's where we fell in love.
And then I worked at, I majored in criminal justice. I always wanted to be a lawyer, and I eventually realized that I could not afford to be a lawyer yet. So I thought that I would leave college, I'd graduate, and then I'd go work for a little bit, try to pay down some of my loans. And eventually I'd come back to that dream. I'd table it, come back to it.
So I'd be starting from a better financial standpoint.
And I never came back to it. What happened was I would work just doing like paralegal things and law firms, and eventually I met Tim and we moved to Reading, which is far away from any, you know, great law school.
And I started working for a utility company in their legal department. And I loved it. I loved it. I felt like I really excelled there. I felt valued, I felt a part of it. I felt connected to them and I was happy doing that. And as that's happening, Tim and I were also talking about kids and, you know, our vision of them growing up, you know, me staying home and law school kind of became a distant, you know, a distant dream that, hey, maybe when I'm 60, I'll pursue it. You know, I'm gonna put a pin in it because it's not right for me right now. And after having the kids, I realized that it was, it was not right for me, you know, for various reasons. But then I was kind of left with like, okay, well, what do I, what do I do with myself? What do I do here?
So we landed on the academy.
I think it eventually turned into me doing what we're doing today.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: So in, in your story, I've only heard how much you value being a mother and a wife and, and all of those things. But there's also that, like, clear ambition when you were young. How about earlier in your life? Because you're still very young, but, you know, clear ambition in your life and then having a family, but also still having that itch of like, ambition and Wanting to feel like you're a part of the financial power of the family and wanting that something more for you. Could you speak to that a little bit?
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Well, I come from a family of very hard workers. My dad, he worked for a company where he did not go to college, but he started in a machine shop in a company, and he eventually worked himself up to CEO of that company.
So he took what he had, which was very little, and made it into something very big. And that was very inspiring to me. My mom, who works with us today, she designed our very first website. She taught herself how to build websites and code and, you know, just from scratch. She never had any technical training of. Of any kind.
So I kind of come from a family that has created.
They've basically created themselves out of not a lot. They did not have a lot to work with.
So growing up, that was my example. And I was fortunate to. I was the first one from my family to go to college because I knew that what I wanted to do, which I always wanted to go to law school. From the time I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a lawyer.
And I knew that I needed to go to college. So I kind of took baby steps financially, you know, community college and then to college and making sure that as I'm going, I'm doing the things that I need to do. I'm getting good grades, I'm making, you know, a basis of knowledge for myself. And once, you know, I get to that end goal, I will be capable of, you know, I'll be able to do what I want to do. And life just has a funny way of, you know, at that time, I didn't have kids.
And once we got to the point, once Tim and I got to the point where we were, you know, where I decided, like, okay, like, I. We're going to have kids one day. Like, let's think about this. What does this really look like? It's hard to think about what it's going to look like to have kids when you're a kid yourself.
So it was around the time when I just started working at the utility company.
We started having more serious conversations about what did we want our lives to look like while we're raising kids. And I just knew that I wanted to be there for them. I wanted to help them along the way, to help them work things out and be there in a steadfast sort of way.
Did I. Did I answer your question?
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
But that ambition still stayed. So you were there, your mom first, all of that stuff, but the ambition still stayed to do something that was yours.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: It was always there. And to be honest, the ambition.
The ambition changed over time. You know, first the ambition was to knock the out of college and get good grades and do what I needed to do and graduate and go to law school. But then it kind of changed. And eventually when it changed, it turned into, I am going to be the best mom that I can for these kids. I'm, you know, so I read books and I, you know, at the time, we didn't have podcasts, but even to this day, like, I still listen to podcasts, but I'm like, I'm going to put my soul into raising these humans, because that now is my job.
And for me, if I can define a purpose for myself, my ambition will usually follow.
I'm not usually the type of person to do something and not be whole, wholeheartedly into it. Tim and I started running. We ran a marathon. Eventually, you know, with the academy, with the kids, like, I.
I need to be able to put everything I have into something.
And the trouble becomes when you have more than some, more than one something going at once. So, you know, for example, being an instructor at the Pipini Academy and having kids. So it's. Which I'm sure is a common dilemma for lots of women, how do you divide that? How do you turn it on? How do you turn it off? How do you switch from one role to the next? And even, you know, I can throw the role of wife in there. Like, that's. Now suddenly, I think the biggest challenge has been when I first started back in college, I had one role, one job.
Then suddenly, over the course of 10 years, my life complicated itself and I started, you know, taking more hats. And the drive is to do everything well. It's to, you know, be really good at everything that you're doing, wear all your hats good.
But that's not always the reality. And sometimes, you know, that can cause you to burn out. It can cause you to, you know, have guilt that maybe you're wearing one hat more than the other, and that hat notices or that hat suffering. And so I guess I would say that I just have always found purpose in the things that I pick to find purpose in. And I'm passionate about them. And I usually am gung ho. Like, I'll just charge in.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: All right, let's talk about the idea of expertise.
I work in a field, so the coaching field is kind of an interesting field because so previous to this, I was a therapist for a decade.
And when I first got became started doing addiction and mental health work. It's like, I don't want to say any person could do it, but there was, like, a pretty low bar for entry. Like, you just had to go, like, to do it, to do addiction work. And this is quite a long time ago.
You just had to go get, like, a certification by going to some weekend stuff. It was, like, pretty, pretty chill.
And then as time went on, like, oh, you have to have a bachelor's in psychology. Oh. To get certain kind of jobs, you have to have these things and these trainings. Oh, now you have to have a master's degree. And when I think about something like, say, like, psychology, especially, like, addiction or mental health training, like, you actually do need some, like, pretty intricate, good, solid training. But I also know a lot of people, like, back when I was a therapist, I knew a lot of people with master's degrees was like, oh, my God, I wouldn't let you, like, I wouldn't let you, like, give therapy to my dog. Like, get out of here.
Get out of your mind.
And so part of it was, like, in a lot of ways, like, almost a lot of different kinds of people could go to school and get it and get a degree or variety of degrees. You just showed that you could, like, get through something and do it relatively well. There's a lot of difference between that and being an expert at something and doing it really well. So I liked the idea of, like, I did, like, I did, like that there was, like, a higher bar being set. But also what I didn't like about it is that a lot of people can't afford school and they can't take on that. That level of debt. A lot of people learn differently. So, like, maybe, like, going to, like, formal education, it's, like, difficult for them. They've got challenges with it, and it just doesn't work for their life. Maybe they had kids when they were young or whatever it is. So I felt like these raising standards in some ways were good because you knew, like, ideally, like, there'd be, like, a standard that you could measure. But on the flip side, I felt it was like, gatekeeping. All these incredible people who could definitely probably be amazing therapists, but maybe weren't able to follow up all these things.
That experience going into coaching where it's like, I don't know, like, I work in a field sometimes where someone will be like, oh, yeah, I'm a coach. And I'd be like, really? What's your background? Like, what do you do? Like, what Kind of coaching. And I work in a field now where there's, like, a ton of coaches. Like, coaching has become this. This huge thing. And you know what?
Fair enough. Like, that's. That's fine. And I don't.
I don't want to kind of, like, dog on people here. I'll just simply say that's, like, the way I view it is every conversation I'm in with someone, we're talking about their life, we're talking about their career, and, like, it really matters that I know what I'm doing. Like, it really, really matters, because people's jobs is, like, you know, like, they've been building their careers. They work in companies that they believe in. Their companies probably do important things, but also, this is how they feed their family. This is how they build their future. Like, being a coach for me is like, a really super serious job, because you're playing at the highest levels of stakes every single day with people. So I think you really need to know what you're doing. So I do believe in expertise. Like, I really, really do believe in expertise, but I don't necessarily believe that expertise is about getting a certification or getting a degree or any of those things. I think it's about how willing people are to go in and learn every single angle of their craft and then adapt it to their personality and how they engage with people. When I hear your story where you're like, yeah, so there are these kind of two ways of doing flower piping, and one is kind of, like, more basic. The other one's super intricate, but it doesn't really capture what the natural world looks like. So actually, I just went and created a third one, and I didn't know how to bake, and I didn't know how to do any of these things. But now, arguably, I am actually an expert, if not the expert.
So I love that. I really love that. From your perspective, what's the importance of kind of formal education or formal expertise in this versus just someone who's willing to do whatever it takes to become exceptional at it.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: So it's funny, we have a lot of pastry chefs at the academy, and they will oftentimes say, in pastry school, I'm here because in pastry school, they did not teach me this. They taught me a whole lot about baker's percentages and how to make meringue and how to set, you know, gelato. Like, they teach you everything about pastry, but they don't teach you art, necessarily. I think that art is something that, you know, is inspired from within so that's not something that they learned at pastry school. So they are coming to me to learn how to turn what they are very familiar with, which is buttercream, into an art form.
And I think that I really love when we get pastry chefs because they bring.
Sometimes I get intimidated because I am not a pastry chef. I'm not a classically trained chef.
So I love to see when we have pastry chefs in the group who are using our recipes, who are creating projects that are not only just astoundingly gorgeous, but I'm sure they're absolutely delicious because they know exactly what they need to do in order to make a cake fluffy or, you know, they're. They don't need to dig into the semantics like I did or, you know, like a grandma would like. We have people from all over.
This is art. And art is, you know, it's nonlinear. It doesn't.
There aren't specific things that you really need to know in order to.
To do this. And I think that there's the creative side of it that allows you to really be good at this. It's the fact that there are no, you know, there's no hard and fast rules, and there's. It's kind of.
You create these things. It's born out of your creativity. So, in essence, I guess I wouldn't.
Expert. It's funny, because I don't identify myself as an expert. I would identify myself more as an artist who is very capable of helping someone else develop this passion and learn this art form. I can't really transfer expertise to you, but what I can transfer to you is the knowledge and some guidelines on how to create, you know, beautiful buttercream flowers and how to bake a cake and how to make it look beautiful. And, you know, people will trans. They'll.
They'll join and they'll, you know, what started initially as a hobby will suddenly become a source of income for their family. And to me, that is so rewarding to see someone turn a hobby into a source of income.
So while it's technically something that anyone can do and anyone does, I mean, there. There's pastry chefs who do it, but there's, you know, people like me who are out there learning this. This craft, but they're doing it because they're learning an art.
They're, you know, there's no. There's no book. There's no rules. There's no real steps for it. You just have to kind of feel it and create, and that allows you to tap into something truly beautiful. In yourself, when you can tap into that creative side and you lose track of time and suddenly you're like, wow. Like, you stop piping and you're like, wow. I feel strangely accomplished right now.
So.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: So how did you go from, hey, I'm interested in this. I'm just going to learn how to do this to, okay, now I'm just going to start cottage baking and I'm going to be doing this to saying, hey, let's start an academy and let's create a business and build it up. So can you just give us the, hey, like, whose idea was it? How did it start? And then how did you get to where you are now?
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so I started with the Blippi cupcakes, and then that transitioned into I've got this thing and I really like it. And I've been looking for a way to, you know, add.
Add to our finances. Like, I grew up with a house full of people who worked, and to me, you know, there was some guilt in not working.
And Tim has always been supportive of me working or not working. But I saw this as an opportunity for myself to say, hey, let's see if we can sell this stuff. You know, let's put this out there.
So I sold what everyone who's in the industry will know is selling to friends and family, which means, you know, your local network, you're selling cakes and cupcakes, too, which is usually frowned upon by the health department, but it's kind of how most people actually start out.
So then I got my cottage food license in New Jersey, cottage food baking was illegal.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: And.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: And what cottage food baking is, is essentially means you are able to, in a sanitary way, produce cakes in your kitchen, your home kitchen, and sell them. And they won't give anyone, you know, any sort of harmful bacteria. So that was illegal in New Jersey when I had first started out.
And then over time, it took about a year, it became legal, and then I got my food. My cottage food operating license. And that's when I initially be cakes and cupcakes.
As I'm making cakes and cupcakes for orders, I'm taking pictures and I'm posting them across social media. And very slowly, everything is gaining traction. People are starting to know me, they're starting to recognize my work, they're reaching out, sending messages, I'm taking orders.
Everything is good. And then I kind of. It's interesting, you were talking before about, you know, the effects of stress and being exhausted and needing to kind of disengage from the stressful situation. Into another.
I began to just completely get overwhelmed by my orders. And part of the problem was that I was not charging enough. I was raising my prices over time, but I was not raising them enough, and I was not raising them fast enough because the demand was still coming in.
Looking back, had I charged sufficiently, the orders probably would have slowed. If you don't hear no ever, that's a bad sign. That means you're leaving money on the table, which is what I did.
So that was happening. But then two things were happening at once. The cottage, baking, exhaustion. But then also, I started getting a lot of requests from other people. How do you do this? I've never seen anything like this.
Can you teach me how to make this? Just repeated requests. And it happened one morning, Tim and I, we were in the kitchen, and I said, I'm like, you know what, Tim?
I think we have something here.
I'm getting a lot of requests to teach this stuff. And you and I both know what's out there in terms of buttercream flowers. You know, you have your grocery store, you have your stuff above. These are blowing people's hair back, and they want to do it, too.
So I said to him, like. Like, I think I could. I think I could teach this. I think we could make it a business. And initially, I wanted to just sell classes, like what I saw online, you know, like, people will make a class and they will sell it as a downloadable class. You pay one flat price. I'm like, let's do that. Why not? Because in my head, I'm just thinking, oh, it'd be great to monetize it. Like, that's the standard way of monetizing buttercream flour piping class.
Put a downloadable up. People buy it, they have it forever. But Tim, he was like, no, why don't we make it a subscription model? He's like, we'll charge people so much a month, and they got full access to everything until they decide that they no longer want to be a member and they cancel.
And we thought about it, and we're like, yeah, like, that feels right. Now the hard part is starting that and only having, like, 10 people that you're making classes for at first. And you're only, you know, you're not making much money at first. But the dream is to scale up and hopefully eventually get to a mass number where it's really a meaningful source of income. So we're like, okay. And he asked me, he's like, can you be in it for the long haul? And I said, I I think so. Like, I. I don't mind a long haul. We're like, shoot. Okay, let's, let's. Let's do it. So at the same time, I was cottage baking, and I also began making tutorials for the academy. Now, at first, my tutorials, they were. They weren't perfect. And perfect, you can't really hope for perfect when you're first starting out at something because it's not going to be perfect. And there's going to come a day where you're going to look back on it and you're gonna say, wow, that was so far from perfect.
But that's okay. The important thing is to just start, just get it out there. So that's what we did. I had my iPhone and, you know, we. I went and I got like, a clean background and I did what I thought people would want to see, and it wasn't right.
The tutorials were like, a little bit too long. I didn't have anything planned out.
So I'm like, you know what? Okay, like, let's pivot. Like, we need. I need to refine the process. Like, I need to turn this into something that makes people feel like their time is valued. So that's what I did. I went back to the drawing board and we. I started creating really meaningful tutorials.
Now I have these two hats. Really, I have four hats. I've got a lot of hats, and I don't have a lot of places to set them.
And I felt like something has got to give. I am overwhelmed.
I need to ditch one of these things, and it's not going to be my kids or my husband.
So I think that it's time that I say goodbye to cottage baking. And that's when I decided that I was ready. I was ready to move on from it. It's not that I gave up.
It's just that I discovered that I loved teaching. I loved trying to transfer knowledge to someone to me, that was so powerful that based on the things I said, that how I connected, how I engage, I can really give someone a skill in art that they didn't previously have. And to me, that was kind of, you know, that was kind of mind blowing.
So from that point on, I made the decision to put away my, you know, cottage baking hat and just throw myself into making these tutorials the absolute best that they could be. So that's. That's where it basically is now is, you know, I'm not looking to add anymore. I'm not looking to add any more hats. I am happy with the hats that we have now. And yeah, that's an awesome story.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: We are about to go into the crucial three, where I'm going to ask you three questions that scale and difficulty as we go along. But before we get there, are there any questions you want to ask me or anything you want to shout out? And we'll add all your social medias.
Social media and where to find you in the episode. Is there anything you want to shout out, Anyone you want to shout out or any questions you want to ask me?
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Well, I mean, if we're doing shout outs, I have to shout out to Tim. He has.
He has been the absolute backbone of the academy and he has us being a part of this academy together has really allowed me to see and appreciate, you know, who he is to the fullest and appreciate our differences, but how they can come together. And I mean, we made beautiful children, but now we made a beautiful business. To me, you know, it was. It was magical. So it. I just want to thank him for being my rock and supportive, you know, how. How blessed. Like to be able to have a spouse that supports your dreams and sees value in them and validates them. And then my mom.
My mom did our very first website. She currently does tech support for us.
She's wonderful in every.
In every sense. It's interesting working with family, you know, because you have that family dynamic there kind of grinding away in the background, but then you guys also have to work towards a common goal and sometimes those lines can get blurred.
So I guess I would just like to say that I appreciate my mom for. For putting up with me, for not disowning me completely. So.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Heck yeah. Awesome. All right, you ready for the crucial three?
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Oh, I think. I think so.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Okay.
So you're not a trained baker.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: No.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: You have no training in flower piping outside of, like what you've learned yourself. You'd never previously ran a business before.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: You're not a trained teacher.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: And you have not previously spent a lot of time on video building, like online learning stuff?
So how did you find the self belief, the courage, that kind of just daring to do all, to wade into all of these waters where there's nobody saying, yeah, you've got this degree, or I'm going to check this box that you've got this. How did you find the courage and find it within you to not just do these things, but do it in a. In a way where you deliver so much value and really create something that changes people's lives?
[00:27:32] Speaker B: I actually, I struggle with Imposter syndrome. Like, I'm sure you know so many people that you counsel do.
And it really.
Confidence for me is like, the number one thing where I'm like, you know, I have no culinary.
I have no pedigree of any kind.
And I'm in a field saturated with, you know, chefs like this pastry chefs. This is. This is baking. This is wedding cakes. There are people who, you know, Ron, Israel, Maggie. Like, there are people out there who are just these phenomenal chefs. And here's me, and I'm like, who am I? Like, who am I to be amongst these elite people?
And when I have those moments, I say to myself, why not? Why not? You, like, you worked hard. You worked really hard to be here. You built your chair, and you've put it at this table. I went to. I was a nominated for an award, and Tim and I, we flew together down to Miami.
And I'm sitting at this table waiting to hear, you know, the announcements. Who. Who won the nomination.
And I look around, and everybody is so decorated with a culinary education that I just didn't have.
And I'm like, what right do you have to sit at this table with these people?
I'm like, you know what? I have a lot of right. I put a lot of hours into this. I put a lot of time. I put a lot of energy, and I have just as much right to be sitting here for this award as anyone else. My work looks just like anybody else's work does. I have just as much right to be here.
So it really is.
To fight the imposter syndrome is hard, but it's necessary, because you have to believe that anyone is capable of anything.
And what needs to happen in order for someone to do something, to become great at something, is they need to be passionate. Which means if they're passionate, they invest the time and they invest the energy and they invest the resources. And if they do that, if they take the time to learn everything about something, they essentially can become the expert or they be. They can become the pastry chef. You know, what are the formal.
The formal ties of school?
They don't make or break you. They just means that you had formal training. My favorite example of. And I would love to pick his brain one day and say, how do you feel right now? Do you feel like you belong? Because I would bet he would say that he doesn't. But Gordon Ramsay, he never went to culinary school, but he's one of the most decorated chefs in the world. He has Michelin stars. He has so many restaurants, and I would just, I would just love to know.
Do you feel that? Do you feel you just. You absolutely deserve to be here. Do you feel it though? Or are there times where you're like, am I as good? Do you have doubt?
And I have to believe that the answer is always going to be yes for anyone. You know, there's always self doubt, but I think it's about changing your perspective. It's, you know that tunnel vision that we were talking about. It's about, you know, you can look through that paper towel roll and you can see what everyone else has done to get there, but you're not doing yourself any justice because you're forgetting about all the things you did to get there. Your journey looks different. It's just you took a different path and more non traditional path, but a different path and you ended up at the same place.
So I am working on that.
You know, it's funny because people will tell you things. They'll. They'll tell, they'll say, you know, the nicest things to you. Sometimes you'll hear them. Tim, he wrote me, I hope it's okay that I'm saying this, but he wrote me the sweetest note the other day and I save it because I need it sometimes.
He said so many things about me that I'm like, wow, are, are we talking about the same person here? Like, are you talking about weep? And I'm like, yes, like you are.
I'm saving that note as a reminder that yes, like you are all of these things. So sometimes it's just about having someone in your corner saying, why not you? Like why not you?
Why, why are they better than you? You know, you're just as good as them. And for me it's important in the academy to be that for someone. You know, sometimes people get frustrated that they're not getting something or a technique recipe and they think, you know, self deprecating thoughts like, I don't belong here or you know, this isn't for me. And my first question is, well, do you want to be here? Are you passionate about this? Because if you're not, then you shouldn't be here. Like you should be driving your time towards something that really means something to you. And if this isn't it, that's okay, you know, but that's okay. But if it is, why not you? Why? Like why, why do you think that you can't. You can, you definitely can. If you have that burning desire inside you, you go for it. You go for it. So we don't know How. How much time we have on this earth. And you never know if anything is going to burn inside you ever. So if you get one thing that starts burning inside you, where it's just a passion and a deep desire to accomplish something, do something. Like, do it. Like, grab it, grab it, take it, and just run with it. And with good intentions, with hard work, like, you get there. Like, you get there. You go through the messy middle.
You know, you got to put the work in, but you get to be the person who you want to be eventually.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: I love that. All right, ready for your second question?
[00:33:55] Speaker B: I'm ready.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Okay. We talked at the very beginning of that podcast. It, like, you know, during COVID kind of losing feeling like you've lost, like, part of yourself, and how getting into this and learning about this let you kind of throw yourself into something and rediscover who you are. So what advice you have for people who could be any age, they could be anywhere in the world, they could have any kind of background. But for people who feel like they've lost that connection to themselves, what advice do you have for. For helping people kind of take a step towards reconnecting with who they are?
[00:34:31] Speaker B: It's funny because what we talked about earlier, that really resonates with me. I always feel like you have to have multiple things that bring you joy. You can't just, you know, rely wholly on one thing to bring you happiness.
You have to have several, several things going. And as I was growing up, I think that my number one mistake was not having, you know, multiple things that brought me joy.
Eventually, one of those things, something's gonna go wrong, right? And if you only have one thing, you feel like you lose yourself. This thing that I love, that I've spent so much time on or I really enjoy doing is gone.
And what do I do now?
Let's pivot to something different. Let's pivot over to, you know, running or flower piping. Let's get a dog. Let's kind of transition into a space where we can find joy and happiness again. Because I think that joy and happiness are almost synonymous with self worth, the feeling of finding who you are.
I would tell someone that if they are struggling to. To, you know, identify with who they think they used to be or who they want to be, start something new.
Like you said earlier, just start something new and just throw your whole self into it, and the rest will kind of follow. You'll find yourself again, and you may feel like you're lost. You know, you may have that feeling of I've lost myself. I'm not the person I used to be.
And I think it's important to know, like, hey, like, yeah, you feel that, but like, that's a feeling you have, but that's not all of you. Like, there are like, look for the other feelings inside of yourself. Like, that's one feeling that you have right now. But there are other feelings too. So just try to like, disassociate with that feeling of, you know, this is it, I have lost myself. There's nothing I can do.
I mean, it happens with me. Transitioning from working into motherhood. You know, you go from working your whole life and then suddenly, you know, you're home with the kids. And it's a beautiful, amazing job to watch, you know, to raise human beings and watch them grow up and turn into who they are.
But it's also very easy to lose yourself, especially if you spent most of your life doing one thing and then that's cut off cold turkey. And now you're supposed to do this other thing where you really don't have much idea of what you're doing. You have no way of getting great feedback.
So that happened to me. So I lost myself transitioning from working to motherhood.
But eventually you find your groove. You're like, okay, I'm going to run. I'm going to work out. I'm going to read some books. I'm going to find a way to either highlight or improve the things in my life that I do like and maybe bring in something different to just add that distraction action to kind of find a way to make myself feel like me again.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: All right, you ready for the last one? It's a Whopper. It's, it's a high stakes question.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: Ready?
[00:37:59] Speaker A: So my beautiful, wonderful wife Monica is vegan.
My friend Mike, who is recording, one of my best friends in the world and his wonderful wife, they're both vegan.
And I myself, as I speak to you, living and breathing, I'm also a vegan.
Can you create an amazing vegan cake recipe and then also create a delicious, realistic vegan buttercream and then create some tutorials so that we can learn how to, how to do this?
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: And we will throw money at whoever needs to be paid off for this to happen.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. I already have a vegan buttercream flour piping recipe. So that is set. I have, I've got everything you need. I can make a cake recipe for you. Yes. Vegan baking is a little bit trickier because you're not Using eggs. So you need kind of something, you need to find your structure somewhere else. So you have to substitute out your, all your liquids because you're not using milk. So you're going to want to, you know, use the vegan ingredients.
I think the key to good vegan baking is to find a recipe that just sticks close to the natural things like the flour, the sugar.
Steer clear of, you know, the crazy, crazy butters and just kind of stick close to basics of baking. You know, avoid using the tofu, sour cream or cream cheese, things like that.
Just kind of keep it simple. Simple is not always a bad thing.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: So listen, you're, you're speaking my language, our language.
We all have terrible sweet tooths. Like, we love that. I just want to say though, first of all, vegan and gluten free are not synonymous and we love gluten. So you gluten the hell out.
And yeah, keep it simple. But like decadent. We want decadent, delicious, moist, ridiculous cake. I see Monica over to my right hand here. She's got a huge smile on her face and Mike is like nodding deeply like, yeah, the cheese cake.
So if we, if we can get some vegan cake recipes, if we can get buttercream and if we can get tutorials, I join your academy for the next 900 years. Get, get us in there.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: So for sure I will, I will 100% make you. I don't have a vegan cake recipe up yet, but it is on my list to add more recipes to the academy over these next two years. And a vegan recipe is definitely on there.
As far as vegan buttercream goes, we do have a vegan buttercream. It is very sweet. I would like to kind of add different variations of vegan buttercream on there. I actually have one that I use on a regular basis for a vegan Swiss meringue. That's not on the academy that I really need to get up on the academy, but the academy, the recipes are there for people, but it's not the main thing. The main thing is the flower piping techniques. So when I'm looking at what do I invest my time in, I'm usually pulling towards, okay, let's add a new flour, let's show people how to, you know, stack tiered cakes. And.
But I will say that you can take pretty much find a Swiss meringue buttercream recipe that you like. And I happen to think that we have a pretty good one, but I am very biased.
And take out the egg whites and add Aquafaba.
Now you may be wondering, what is aquafaba? It's very magical because you can make meringue with it. Aquafaba is literally, you go to the grocery store, you walk down the bean aisle, you grab a can of chickpeas, and you drain that juice out and you whip it up. And that is magic. You add sugar and butter to that and it's chef's kiss, you know, first.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Of all, I wish you could see Monica's face right now. She's got like a real. She's got a real smile that she reserves only when we see, like birds in the wild.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: So, like, I feel it from here. I can feel it.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: And to the casual listener, they're like bean juice. That doesn't.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: I know, Sounds disgusting.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: It's so good. Unbelievable. Okay, listen, this was a great conversation. I had so much fun. Is there anything that you want to add as we're closing off?
[00:42:45] Speaker B: No, I mean, I. I guess I would just like to add that if anyone out there is looking for, you know, that little something that happens to be sweet but also happens to give them a creative artistic outlet, check out the academy.
I'm here for you. I'm there for you. The members are there for you. It is the most encouraging and welcoming community that you will ever come across. So, you know, and it's also like, if you're hurting on the inside and just kind of want to have like a little sugar meditative session, there's nothing better than just standing in your kitchen with a candle lit cup of coffee. Off to the one side, you're listening to music, maybe you're not listening to music, depending on what you like. And you're just standing there, just you and your buttercream, and you're just making shapes with it. There's just something about that that is so soothing to the brain. So if that's you, I invite you also. You are welcomed as well. You're among good company, so.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Heck yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, everyone. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do. And we will see you next time on One Step Beyond.
