EatInEatOut Winter 2015 | Page 50

FROM THE KITCHENS OF: THE BRUNETTE BAKER BUTTER AND BRIOCHE BRIAN STAFFIELD JENNY JACK is completely and irrevocably in love with food. A self-confessed sugar addict, she is the baker, food fluffer, photographer and sarcastic writer behind the blog, The Brunette Baker. At the age of thirteen, Jenny fell in love with the culinary arts after her Home Economics teacher told her she’d made the prettiest cheese balls she’d ever seen. At fifteen, she was jotting down recipes on the back of her homework and recreating them as the pros on television taught her. She’s still convinced to this day that her calculus teacher’s sudden weight gain was down to her. By seventeen, she was waitressing and baking desserts alongside a pastry chef at a local fine dining restaurant, to whom she credits (and blames) her love affair of all sugar-laden decadence. Although she pursued a different career path, the niggling feeling to work with food never fell silent. EATIN FOOD BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT 50 WWW.EATINEATOUT.CA She originally created her blog in January 2011 to document recipes with step-by-step tutorials to show complaining friends that baking isn’t as difficult as they deem it to be. It also served double duty as an online recipe journal for her kids to reference time and time again. “My Mom has made some delicious creations over the years, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked her to ‘Show me this’ or ’How did you do that?’ She couldn’t remember what she did to make something that was good into fantastic. And her Pecan Sticky Buns would haunt your mind for days!” Four years on, Jenny had no idea the incredible friendships and opportunities the world of blogging would bring her. She is currently enrolled in culinary school with the dreams of one day working in a test kitchen. She lives outside Toronto with her superhero husband and two hilarious kids.