By Nancy D. Lackey Shaffer | Photos by Viktor Budnik
The name of her company is Awkward Pastry, but Jess Baker’s tasty treats are anything but. Sleek, gravity defying or architectural? No. Covered in picture-perfect fondant? Definitely not.
But delightful, special and flavorful? Absolutely!
What Baker calls “awkward” most of us would find whimsical, imaginative, perhaps even a little wild.
“I’m Awkward Pastry. Everything’s going to be beautiful, but it’s going to be loose, it’s going to be rustic, it’s going to have a creative quality to it,” she explained.
Most of all, it will be wonderful to eat.
“I just want to it to taste delicious,” Baker said. “Having something beautiful is great, but more important than anything else, it needs to taste good.”

Flour Meets Flower
Awkward Pastry is based in a commercial kitchen space in Ventura, which Baker shares with a bread maker (Wantz & Kneads), a goat cheese purveyor (Drake Farms) and a vegan cheese maker (Reine Vegan Cuisine). Here she crafts cakes, cupcakes, cookies, lemon bars, tarts, pies and other delights, recognizable by their artistic flair and clever use of foliage. Her two main claims to fame are her love of incorporating fresh flowers into her bakes, and her distaste for fondant.
“It’s trash!” Baker said, not mincing words. “For me, I don’t like working with it, I don’t like eating it. I’ve been to weddings where they have cakes and I’m peeling off the fondant to eat it.”
As long as no fondant is involved, the sky’s the limit for Baker’s kitchen creativity, and she thoroughly enjoys working with themes, colors and unusual flavors (Earl Grey, passion fruit and olive oil are among her favorites).
Where her artistry really shines, however, is in her use of florals, most of which are sourced locally from Night Heron Farm in Carpinteria and Fleur de Rye in Ventura.
“My assistant jokingly calls me a ‘cake florist’ because I’m just fascinated with flowers and playing with textures and the color theory of it all,” Baker said.

Well Traveled
Baker has been in the baking business for about 10 years, taking a circuitous route to get there…but bringing her extensive knowledge of art and design along for the ride.
Originally from Ventura, she moved to Washington State when her parents got divorced, making frequent trips back to visit her father (who still resides in the area). Despite staying in the Pacific Northwest through her college years at Washington State University, and then living in Boston to get an MFA at Tufts, she said that “I’ve always had a foot in Ventura…so it’s home.”
“As a visual artist, I paint, I draw, I’ve been doing a lot of gouache paintings lately…I taught silkscreen at a university. Really into pattern and texture and color, always,” Baker said of her artistic endeavors. “But art school just really burnt me out. I still have that qualification — I can still be Professor Jess — but it’s just not the world for me.”
She eventually returned to Southern California, and helped take care of her best friend, Katherine, as she was dying of brain cancer. After her friend passed in 2015, Katherine’s husband, Marek (also a close friend), moved to Poland for work. He was a tech professional; his company was looking for Americans to work in customer service. He suggested that Baker also make the move to Krakow.

Taste of Home
2015 would prove to be a momentous year in several ways. In addition to losing Katherine, Baker was in an auto accident in Boston (her car was rear-ended by a semi truck) that left her with health problems.
“My best friend died, I get hit by a semi and I move to Poland — all in two months,” she recalled.
Baking proved to be a solace, a joy and a creative outlet — and allowed her to bring the flavors of home to her life in Poland.
“I missed the taste of American treats,” she admitted. “They had some amazing desserts, but they didn’t have cake, chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars. They didn’t even know the word pie.”
As complications from the car accident worsened, baking proved to be a vehicle for healing, too.
“That was another thing about this journey,” Baker said. “I got to be on my feet and be creative. It was almost like physical therapy in a way…I’m way healthier now, and cake was a huge part of getting healthy.”

Buttered Up
Baker left Poland in 2016, in part to get better medical care, and worked on turning her passion for baking into a profession.
“I started small,” she said. “I made some cookies for Melody Wine Bar in L.A. and had some pop-ups…then I worked for Butter Cake Shoppe.”
Sisters Sasha and Ari, who own Butter in L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood, happily took the eager Baker under their wings.
“I thought of it as free continuing education,” Baker explained. “It was better to work in a kitchen [for free] than pay for culinary school.”
After about a year, Butter started paying Baker. When Sasha went on maternity leave, Baker helped Ari run the operation. She has remained close with both sisters — whom she calls her “Butter Babes” — and credits them with helping her get her start.
“[I learned] how a small business is run, how to bake at scale, specific techniques. I didn’t know how to decorate a cake before I worked with them.”
Baking Her Way to Ventura
Baker sold her own creations on the side, calling herself the Awkward Pastry Chef — both for her free-form style of baking and her warm and vibrant, sometimes quirky, personality. She moved back to Ventura County in 2020 to manage the Bristol Farms bakery in Santa Barbara, but her “side hustle” quickly grew into a full-time business.
“As a baby baker…it was just opening a Yelp account,” Baker explained. “Anyone that called, I would answer the phone — all the time.”
Awkward Pastry thrived in Ventura.
“Ventura is definitely a smaller pond. When I was in L.A. I was competing with world-class pastry chefs with way more experience than me, working for better restaurants, bigger restaurants, more unique ingredients…I came to Ventura and it felt like there was so much more opportunity here. … It’s just exploded, and I owe a huge part of that to Ventura.”

Edible Art
Looking ahead, Baker would love to have her own commercial kitchen one day, and full creative control.
“I love when someone just says, ‘we love your vibe, and we want you to just do your thing.’
I’ll usually charge a bit of a floral budget so I can get some premium flowers. And then I really go for it, with squiggles and ribbons of buttercream, some gold splatter…
“I want all my cakes to be a ‘Jess Baker Creation.’ That’s when I’ll know I’ve hit it big — when I don’t need to do other business.”
With an operation that puts out about 800 tiered cakes every year, supplies desserts to Peirano’s and Buddy’s Wine Bar and has clients from Topanga to Santa Barbara, it probably won’t be long before these goals are realized.
In the meantime, Baker keeps baking, and Awkward Pastry keeps cooking. All in all, Baker said that she’s in a good place.
“I’m using cake as my creative expression, my palette and my canvas,” she said. “To be a paid artist is the dream.”
Awkward Pastry
2646 Palma Drive, Suite 420, Ventura
805.341.9194 (text only, please)
awkwardpastry.com
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