Columbus Bakeries: Jan Kish-La Petite Fleur
For local baker Jan Kish, cake is an art form.
Columbus Monthly
For 40 years, Worthington baker Jan Kish has been delighting Central Ohio with her whimsical, extravagant wedding and celebration cakes. But there’s more to Jan Kish-La Petite Fleur than meets the eye.
“I have a degree in English from Oxford in England, and I wanted to teach,” she says. But while in the U.K., the quaint tea shops caught her eye.
After Oxford, Kish studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and England and L’Académie de Cuisine in Maryland but ended up working as a surgical assistant at Ohio State University. During the decade she spent at OSU, she launched a catering business, La Petite Gourmet, on the side. She later opened a restaurant/catering business in Upper Arlington called La Petite Fleur.
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Columbus Bakeries: Patisserie Lallier
For a decade, Michelle Kozak has been baking some of the city s best pastries out of her home in Grandview.
Columbus Monthly
Mention French pastry in Columbus and Michelle Kozak’s name is often one of the first to come up. Her baking business, Pâtisserie Lallier, is treasured by those craving fresh pain au chocolat, fruit tarts, madeleines and even meticulously made confections that fill Advent calendars during the holidays.
After immersing herself in a monthlong pastry course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in 2009 (“for fun”), Kozak launched a small-scale cottage bakery from her Grandview home. In 2010, she started selling her pastries at Clintonville’s Global Gallery Coffee Shop. Two years later, after taking intermediate and advanced pastry courses, she traded her job in banking for the more solitary, creative life of a full-time baker.
Columbus Bakeries: Moonflower Bakery
Columbus Monthly
For Dublin resident Pearl Althoff, baking just fits into her lifestyle. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been in the kitchen helping my mom, helping my grandma,” she says. “It’s always been something that’s brought me joy.”
So it’s probably no surprise that when she transitioned from fifth-grade teacher to stay-at-home mom in 2017, she turned to baking as a creative outlet. Around the same time, Althoff a 10-year vegetarian at that point became vegan.
After talking to a vegan friend and watching documentaries like “What the Health” and “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,” she decided to take the plunge. “Those [films] really just opened my eyes to a lot of the conditions that the animals are in, and also the workers who work in farms and the slaughterhouses,” she says. “I really wanted to align my actions with what I felt was important.”
Columbus Bakeries: Kennedy s Kakes
Adrian Jones talks about growing her own business and pivoting amid the pandemic.
Columbus Monthly
Baking is a skill handed down to Adrian Jones by her grandmother and mother. Using their recipes as a foundation, Jones Adrian Jones started Kennedy’s Kakes (named after her own daughter, Kennedy) in 2009 as a part-time business from her home kitchen.
“I just took a leap of faith and started selling the things that people always asked me for, and it was my pound cake that my mom made and sweet potato pie,” says the baker and cake artist. “And it evolved into what I’m doing now. I would’ve never thought wedding cakes. It was just traditional desserts in the beginning, but my own business is something I’ve always wanted to have.”
Columbus Bakeries: Mjomii
Columbus Monthly
Calvin Kim and his wife, Sasha, dove into the world of home bakers after discovering that Columbus lacked a sweet treat readily available in his home country of South Korea. That’s where the pair met, while Sasha was living there as an expat.
“While we were dating and living in South Korea, we tried some macarons in Seoul and really enjoyed them,” Calvin says. “But after moving to Columbus in 2014, we couldn’t find anything like the ones we tried [there].”
They went to Pistacia Vera, of course, and other local bakeries. But nothing matched the crispy-meets-chewy shell texture and the abundant-but-not-too-sweet filling of Korean macarons.