goat milk flan
the first recipe of the year (!!!) and some thoughts on burn out and anxiety.
Wow, hi!! Hello and happy new year. It is the 8th of January and the start of the second week of the year but, I spent the last week rotting on the couch post holiday trying to relax, rest and reset so to me, this is the start. The first day of my 2024. The first day of a year with no cake orders. In my downtime I did a lot of reflecting on the end of my cake journey. Which if ya didn’t know, 12/31/2023 was my last day as a full-time cake maker/cake decorator. Immediately after handing over my last cake to a customer, I did start to spiral. I felt like an empty shell of a woman. I felt overwhelmingly lost. I wish this were an exaggeration. When you’ve essentially made your work your entire personality, you kinda feel like you’ve lost a little part of yourself when you call it quits.
I thought the end of the cake train would bring feelings of joy and relief but, the opposite. Textbook thoughts of “shit, bitch… what the fuck, why did you do that????” “how the fuck are you actually gonna make ends meet as a recipe developer??”" “Again… WHY DID YOU QUIT YOUR JOB BITCH” “You’re gonna fail within two months.. and then what??” After I calmed myself down from all of that, with the help of a 2 hour long therapy session, in which we came to the conclusion I need to start speaking to myself with a kinder tone. I reflected on the good this new venture brings. Because I was incredibly burnt out from making cakes. I had no joy or creativity for the work I was doing and towards the end it felt like I was fighting tooth and nail everyday just to make cakes. Which, is not necessarily how I want to feel about going to work. For the past three years I haven’t been eating, sleeping or treating myself right. Even as someone who advocates strongly for others in this industry to take care of themselves, I didn’t give myself the same grace and was essentially running on cortisol fueled fumes. Now, I’m working on creating a real work/life balance. Honestly, we all should be.
Tiptoeing into 2024, I will be prioritizing my health- in all aspects. More time will be spent with friends, family and truly by myself. In focusing on myself a little more, I’m hoping that breeds a little more consistency into being able to create recipes on a more regular basis. So here’s what we can hope to expect over the next 366 days TBD:
More recipes, duh.
More interviews with fellow bakers, which I’ve already got a few lined up and ready for ya ♡
Parts 2-4 on how to develop recipes
Croissants with Out of Thin Air for all my LA babies!! Yes yes!! One project I have in the works for the new year is building out the pastry program for my friend Alex. It’s something I’m very excited to be working on and I cant wait to share bits of the process with all of you ♡
and hopefully so much more.
Thanks so much for sticking around for another year ♡
While I claim to have been rotting, which I did, I watched more movies in one week than I have in the past 3 years, and Saltburn on repeat at least 5 times (trying to distract myself from the chatter and buzzing in my head.. whoops). I did, get to work on a couple of new recipes for you all, mostly because I needed some sweet treats to snack on during my movie binge. I started with a goat milk flan because as I was walking into my fave bougie grocery store in LA, Vicente Foods, and I saw a man leaving with a half gallon of goat milk. Sometimes that’s all it takes to spark to creativity. Ideas immediately started to flood my brain, piling on to the buzz and chatter.
The milk and cream are infused with cinnamon sticks, star anise and orange peel. Which, is totally optional, but when given the option to add even more flavor, why would ya skip out on that? And for those of you who don’t like the taste of goat milk, you can use regular whole milk in its place. I thought about using a can of caramelized condensed milk, dulce de leche, to give more of a cajeta flavor to the flan. But, ultimately I kind thought that might be a bit much on the palette. Sometimes developing flavor is like putting together a fashionable outfit, like Coco Chanel says, “look in the mirror and take one thing off”.
