○On Saturday nights, strangers gather at Cynthia Bauman's kitchen island to learn something new.
Each cooking class is different.
They learn to make authentic Italian recipes while following Bauman's instructions at his Forest Lane home.
From 2021, cooking classes have started as an extension of her activities. Cucina Dolce is a bread-making business that started in 2019.
Bauman was born in Milan, Italy, but moved to Boston with his family when he was 18 months old. She grew up in an Italian family surrounded by Italian culture in Boston. There, her parents and her grandparents grew fresh vegetables and made everything from homemade pasta, wine, prosciutto, sausage, and cheese.
Bauman regularly helped his mother and Nonna in the kitchen, teaching them recipes for Italian cuisine from the Campagna region. At the time, she wasn't as interested in cooking as the rest of her family, but she was interested in being creative with her hands.
After a few years, she realized how much fun it was to host dinner parties.
“Cooking is a way of giving something to your loved ones, and you can see how happy they are when they taste the food,” says Bauman. “It's never about compliments. It's about satisfaction.”
People who attended her dinner parties often told her that she needed to go into business to share more of her food with others.
After looking around Dallas and noticing the lack of authentic Southern Italian bakeries, she pulled out her favorite cookie and cake recipes.
Baked goods include traditional Neapolitan struffoli, garnished with bright orange lemon zest. Another is the Sicilian fig cookie, which is made with dried Turkish figs and toasted walnuts wrapped in pastry dough and topped with nonpareils or sprinkles. Orange ricotta cookies are an Italian classic with freshly grated orange zest and vanilla orange glaze.
Once we went online, orders gradually started arriving.
My first order arrived around Christmas from someone at NextDoor. The first customer ordered 3 things from the menu.
“I was a little nervous,” Bauman recalled. “I wanted to do a good job.'' She said, “I'm really glad I met you.''
Orders continued to come in, and Bauman began baking for special events.
“I do everything from start to finish. When an order comes in, my attention is only on that person, so I'm passionate about it,” she says.
Her biggest week to date was last November, when there were three weddings over the weekend, where she made more than 1,500 cookies and wedding cakes.
She asserts that this class was born out of a “fluke.”
Around 2021, Bauman saw an online ad for a restaurant that needed a pastry chef. Although she wasn't looking for a job because she was confident in her abilities, she decided to apply just for fun.
“I just wanted to be interviewed to see what they thought of me because I was enjoying what I was doing at home,” Bauman says.
During the trial interview, Bauman made about 50 tiramisu in four hours. She remembers that the recipe wasn't authentically Italian. There was too much cream, no liqueur and no espresso was used to flavor the coffee.
This experience inspired her to teach her own classes, and her first class was, of course, Tiramisu.
Now, a few more years into her home baking business and cooking classes, she's ramping up as she prepares for another client who needs more than 900 cookies. Bauman said she recognizes the irony that she grew up with her mother only cooking when she needed a hand.
“[My mother] If I had been interested in cooking when I was younger, I would have been able to run the family business,” she jokes. “Now I'm teaching her.”
Occasionally on weekends, she hosts up to four guests in her home for intimate cooking lessons. That night, she's known to teach you everything from her homemade pasta to Tuscan soup to chicken marsala. Throughout her class, Bauman explains her step-by-step methods and details about the dishes, and at the end we enjoy a meal together.
“We just cook and have fun,” Bauman said. “I wanted it to be different with a few people. Each of them will be involved every step of the way so they can say, 'I did this.'”
The guests range in experience and age, from an 80-year-old who hasn't touched an electric mixer in years to a 20-year-old who is new to cooking.
“We all become little friends just for that moment,” Bauman says.
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