About Pastry Sampler

Welcome. :)

If you are reading this page, you found it via this site or a search about pastry. If you are new to PastrySampler.com, welcome! If you've been here before, you will notice some changes. Changes are good!

The main difference is the look. This site is not a wordpress site, and is strictly HTML. The old pages you will find when you browse that have not been converted to this new look were all hand coded by moi. Think about that for a minute - bulding something from a blank white page in Adobe Dreameaver, using no templates at all. It functioned well, but, as the use of mobile devices have incresed in the last several years, so has the need for a responsive and mobile-ready site. This fits the bill for it all, and my faithful Dreamweaver still gets a workout, too.

Look around. Using the above tabs, you'll find recipes, baking articles, and links to the shop, and much more. This site was started many years ago to fulfill both my desire to be in the cake decorating business while still being out of the kitchen and at home with my youngens - and share pastry knowledge and still grow and learn from others. It started out small, with just a few pastry rings and decorating tools, and grew to a pretty robust site with lots of unique baking tools and equipment for professionals. Many of the articles you'll find were spawn from emails or letters with customers' questions, suggestions, and tips. If one person has a question on a topic, so do many others. I'm lucky that this site has been referenced in cookbooks and many pastry blogs. It's the content people want, not the showy plugins from a fancy blog.

Pastry Sampler has now evolved to specialize in cake decorating tips, and I get many, many, MANY requests for custom orders. The requests go something like this:

• Customer "I can't find tip number XX from XX brand! No one has it!" or "Help me find a replacement for this tip! (emails a picture of the bent tip)"
• Me: "No problem. I have it (or can order it). I'll send you an invoice and ship it out to you (or send it when it comes in).."
• Customer: "Omigosh Thank you!!"
• Me: "Sure thing!"

Many of my customers are repeat customers, and many hail from other countries other than the U.S. (My Austrailian and Canadian customers - thanks so much!). I ship everywhere. I am trying to steer customers to custom orders via the etsy store, but most just simply prefer direct custom ordering, and that's okay, too.

My cake decorating background: I did wedding cake couture at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel for 6 years, and was a fine dining restaurant pastry chef for two years before that. Now, I dedicate my cake decorating time to creating birthday masterpieces for my kids - only sometimes I wish they didn't know what I did for a living, you should see their drawings of what they expect me to create. Oy vey. But, I obviously relish it. Not many kids can say they have a pastry chef for a mom, so I guess I have to oblige. lol.

Thanks for stopping by! Email me and let me know what you think of the new look. :)

And happy baking.

Renee.

Here's me - once upon a time:

Yep, that's me. :)

And now:

 

Connect with Renee:

    

Credits and More:

Social icons by Vervex.ca
Original Pastry Sampler font 'Blackjack'

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