BY: ALYSSA MAHADEO
With all those fun and creative five-minute food videos we see scrolling through our social media timelines, it has never been easier to create five-star meals from scratch. Whether you’re looking to whip up dinner for the family or impress your guests with a new take on a recipe, pulling together meals like a gourmet chef can be quick and easy depending on who you ask.
But what’s for dessert? Right alongside some of those fantastic meal ideas we see scrumptious baked goods, and delicate pastries that are sure to tempt your sweet tooth. While some things might look easy to make, it sometimes gets overwhelming if you can’t gather all the ingredients you need from your own cupboard.
Adeola Oluyomi is a New York-born, Nigerian raised, self-taughtbaker with a passion for baked goods, and trying new things. In Nigeria, Adeola attended the University of Lagos to study health education, something she didn’t have a keen interest in, but as is custom in most African/Caribbean households, she was expected to someday follow a prestigious career path.
“My father was an accountant, and he suggested to me that I could also be an accountant too,” Adeola shares, “I wanted to study Law, but the courses I was taking for a career path in accounting didn’t support the requirements for Law when I was ready to attend University.”
Although it wasn’t her first choice, Adeola did what she needed to while also fostering another interest she had in food, particularly baking.
“I was always into food, into baking, and in Nigeria,my first experiences in baking were in an electric oven,” Adeola says. “Back then there was no real future in cooking, or that was how people saw things and so for me it was more like a hobby than something to be taken seriously.”
Adeola recalls some of her first baking experiences, baking a cake in a pot, asopposed to a traditional baking pan. “My mother didn’t bake, and so this is what I had to work with,” she laughs, “I was probably around ten years old, baking in this potand the cake came out really gummy, obviously not properly baked, and I remember my father saying wow this cake is really moist!”
Since baking wasn’t a common activity in their household, Adeola shares how they didn’t have mixers, and she would have to take a wooden spoon and mix everything by hand.
“We baked a lot of cake, and it used to feel like we were mixing for hours,” she shares. “We also didn’t have a lot of ingredients sometimes and would have to improvise using sugar cubes instead of granulated sugar.”
After University, Adeola moved back to North America coming to live in Canada after getting married. When she came to Toronto still looking to foster her interest in baking, enrolling in a baking and pastry art course at George Brown, her first real formal education/training baking experience.
“It was still very much a hobby to me, I never really thought I would do baking professionally,” Adeola shares, “I loved meeting people, and learning new techniques to bake. Before then I was experimenting with things, doing it myself researching online for ways to bake, but the opportunity to meet real pastry chefs and learn techniques from them was very interesting to me.”
Her course at George Brown really opened her eyes to a side of baking she had never known. Her final culminating project allowed her to experience what it might be like to open her own establishment and provided insight on the things she would need.
After her course at George Brown, Adeola dabbled in catering, helping out making baked goods and delivering them across the city, a task that was both taxing and time-consuming.
“When I discovered subscription boxes, a service that you could subscribe to and every month you would get something new I knew this would be great,” Adeola shares, “I love to try new recipes and experiment with ways to make the things I bake better. With a subscription box every month you can do something different, it allows you to be creative, while also learning something new.”
The Innocent Baker Subscription Box is all about facilitating the baking process and educating people so they can learn a new skill, and also be proud of their creations.
“I wanted to make baking easier, and more accessible for the occasional baker,” Adeola explains. “Some people love to bake, love the idea of baking, but they don’t necessarily want to stock up on all of the ingredients required to do so.”
Inside The Innocent Baker Subscription Box is all of the pre-measured gourmet ingredients with easy to follow step by step recipe cards for you to create delicious gourmet baked treats. They are Canada’s FIRST Gourmet Baking Subscription Box working to give you all the fun of baking without the hassle delivered to your doorstep on a month tomonth basis.
“It provides opportunities for family, to spend time with the kids, with your loved ones and share your very own hand baked goods.”
It really is foolproof, there is no baking experience required to maneuver through this box of sweetness. You don’t need to be an expert pastry chef, and everything you need can be found in your box delivered each month. Each box is a surprise! You get to bake something new and share it with your friends and family. “These aren’t ‘just add water’ recipes,” Adeola explains. “Effort is required, but we lay the groundwork, you just have to follow the instructions and the rest is a breeze.”
It’s a great box for kids, the simple easy to follow instructions on the recipe card are illustrated and they also provide links to helpful videos to make following the instructions even easier and help you to bake like a pro in no time!
The Innocent Baker Subscription Box offers a convenient month to month option which allows you the opportunity to try out the boxes without a long-termcommitment. Your subscription automatically renews each month so all you would need to do is to wait to get your box in the mail and start baking! You also have the option to opt out of the month’s order in advance, so it’s a both easy and affordable to subscribe!
“We are always looking for new and innovative recipes to share with the customers, new ways to improve our box and more options for them to choose from,” Adeola says. “I test all of the recipes in my own kitchen, I want to share my love for baking with our community allow them to give it a try, spend some time with their loved ones and eat some amazing treats at the end of it.”
Baking has never been so easy. The Innocent Baker Subscription Box offers the opportunity to bake something good, to spread joy and laughter and also provides the chance to bake like a pro in your own kitchen!
