About Zoë

(photo by Susan Powers)

The past several years have been spent chasing my two very active children around and in my spare time writing bread books (Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day and Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day – 10/2011). Long before I had children or wrote books, and while studying art at the University of Vermont, I started a cookie company as a way to earn extra money. I baked outrageous gourmet cookies in my boyfriend Graham’s apartment, sold them from a beautiful vending cart he made me and established a few wholesale accounts.

I married Graham and he continues to build beautiful things (he created this website). We traveled through Europe eating pastries for our honeymoon and then finally settled in Minnesota. I worked in a couple of kitchens, but decided I needed more formal training and headed off to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York. Since then I’ve been a pastry chef at several Twin Cities’ restaurants. I got to work with some of the finest talent this town has including Steven Brown, Andrew Zimmern (before he started eating crazy things on the Travel Channel) and many chefs at the D’Amico company. I was doing what I loved and Rick Nelson of the Minneapolis Star Tribune even called my desserts “endlessly delicious… the best in town… appealing, inventive and flat-out gorgeous…” What more could I ask for? Kids!

I began teaching others baking at Cooks of Crocus Hill In 1997. I even taught Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty how to bake christmas cookies on the local NBC affiliate KARE 11-TV. That was my 15 minutes of fame, well more like five. It was great fun but the most exciting event was when I was invited to participate in the Baking and Pastry Arts Invitational Retreat for America’ s leading pastry chefs, sponsored by the CIA and Food Arts Magazine. There I met and worked with the leading pastry chefs in the country world, a dream come true!

In addition to writing, teaching and consulting to restaurants, I play here, on zoebakes and write the Weekend Baker posts for the Cooking Channel. I live in Minneapolis with my husband Graham and two sons, my best creations yet!