About Us

Hi, I’m Rebecca! I moved to Chicago from Ohio for culinary school in 2005 and never really looked back- the food scene here is amazing and I’m so happy to be a small slice of it.

I’ve had MANY jobs across the city and I’ve been cooking and baking in catering, restaurant, large scale production, cafe/bakery, and hotel kitchens for the last 20-ish years. Starting out at a huge catering company was a great move- large numbers of things don’t faze me, but I later learned that I haaaattte working lines- give me a finite prep list any day! I also learned that my absolute favorite thing to do is figure out a new recipe- testing things, taking notes, and re- testing is so satisfying when you get to that perfect end result.

One of my side gigs years ago was selling fruit at farmers markets. Because I lived in the city, the farmers would give me whatever super ripe fruit wasn’t going to make it back to Michigan on the truck without getting squished. Having roommates- I had to figure out what to do with these crates of fruit without taking up the entire fridge! So, I started making jams. I’d follow the common recipes, but there was always SO MUCH white sugar going over all the beautiful fruit, which made me a little sad. After all, I wanted my jam to taste like actual fruit and not sugar! I started looking into recipes that used natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup.

I also started cycling around the same time, as lots of my friends were avid cyclists. We did some longer rides (RAGBRAI for our 30th birthdays, a century to Milwaukee for a beer fest, and many Metra rides home from suburban breweries) and also camping trips, which ended up being key for the way that I thought about jams.

Being more of a car camper as opposed to bikepacker, I’d bring loaves of sourdough and jars of jam to share for camp breakfast. We would pop open a jar of jam for toast in the morning, go about our day, then come back to camp for drinks around a fire. Since the jams were already open, and essentially are fruit with sweetener… they weren’t so far off of a cocktail mixer. We stirred Cherry Maple Jam into bourbon, and after that there was jam on the packing list for every camping trip! We’d realized how versatile the naturally sweetened jams could be, and they weren’t relegated to just toast in the morning.

Fast forward to January of 2022, Chicago (finally!) started allowing home bakeries. I quit my job, took some business classes, and waited impatiently for the paperwork to come out. I officially got started in the fall of 2022, and started selling jams and jellies at farmers markets the following spring.

I make sure to use local ingredients whenever possible- that means all the fruits, herbs, stone ground flours, dairy, pecans, honey, and maple syrup in my pastries are grown or made in the Midwest. I also use a local spice shop for their great blends, even though technically the spices can’t grow here. I still feel excited on delivery days because I get to use such fresh and beautiful ingredients! It's been fun to develop new jam flavors and use them in pastries; look for butter swirl cookies, pop tarts, brownies, and macarons that feature my jams.

And yes, that Cherry Maple Jam is a best seller ;)