Today we’d like to introduce you to Carleen Anderson.
Carleen, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I knew from a pretty young age I wanted to work in the food industry. Watching the Food Network chocolate and cake challenges every year and taking over some of the cooking for the family in early high school cemented it for me. After culinary school, I was lucky enough to get started in a Michelin Star restaurant in San Francisco. There, is where I transitioned from savory to pastry. I remember my first week there, my boss asked me where I saw myself in ten years and I said decorating wedding cakes. Fast forward six years and I found myself still working in the pastry department in restaurants.
While I did love it, it still wasn’t enough for me. After moving back to San Diego I finally got my first bakery position. It was in a cupcake shop where I got my first taste of decorating. I started to do a few cakes at home for friends and family and a few people that reached out via Instagram. At the next bakery I worked at, I was fortunate enough to be able to observe a fantastic cake decorator up close while he did all of the custom wedding and event cakes. I began to put into practice at home what I was seeing to build my skills. While there I was encouraged to apply for a decorating position at the bakery I am currently with.
With only about eight cakes in my portfolio, I took a chance and it changed my life for the better! I was finally able to get hands-on experience. My sister then encouraged me to join a group on Facebook dedicated to uplifting the people in our community by supporting them and their small businesses. I have been blessed with putting out a product that people love enough to not only come back for but also recommend to others.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Although I do have formal training in the baking aspect of my business, I have no formal training in decorating. Everything I have learned has been on the job as I go, so I very much consider myself to be self-taught. While I find that it is a fantastic way to learn, there are also a lot of disadvantages.
Knowing how to avoid mistakes and what to do to fix them has been much more trial and error than I expected. Sure I could look up things online and watch hours and hours of tutorials, but without having an experienced person there watching me, it was hard at first to learn exactly what I was doing wrong and therefore it was hard to fix mistakes.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Pastry Yumies – what should we know?
As stated in my slogan, Pastry Yumies is all about “making everyday yummy one pastry at a time”. Along with cakes I also provide things like cookies, cupcakes, cake pops and dessert cups so that there is something for everyone’s tastes, design aesthetic, and budget. Something I love to be able to offer my clients is the ability to create their own unique flavor combinations.
I always tell people that the only limit on flavor is their imagination. I do of course have a list of flavors I can offer to clients who don’t really know what they want. It includes the more common things like chocolate, red velvet and vanilla but I also offer some more exciting things with savory ingredients like bacon and whiskey or herbal like lavender and thyme.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I wouldn’t have gotten so swept up in the idea that I have to have all the gadgets. Most are essentially short cuts. Of course some of them are useful but looking back, I wish that I had learned the proper way to do things from the very beginning to make my skills foundation stronger from the start. With me using those gadgets and teaching myself that way at home, it made the transition to doing it in the bakery a little more jarring because I didn’t have those gadgets with me.
It was basically like starting over again. I actually thought the bakery that I’m currently with was going to fire me because it felt I was taking way too long to pick up on the techniques that are required for the job! Happy to report I was wrong!
Contact Info:
- Phone: 6198187139
- Email: c.anderson_pastry@yahoo.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pastry_yumies/
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