Botanical Baking Club
A nine month exploration of botanicals as vehicles for culinary delight. Get to know herbs through the lens of pleasure, play, and taste!
Each month, we send you 1-2 oz of a different dried herb with recipes, a video cooking demo, and plant monograph. Watch, read, and bake on your own time. And then join us for a monthly cohort zoom to share together about our adventures in baking, relationship with the plants, and the glee therein.
25% of our proceeds from this program will be donated to the World Central Kitchen for their work bringing hot meals to people recovering from and experiencing crisis around the world, inlcluding currently in Gaza, Lebanon, Egypt, Ukraine, Brazil, and Haiti
Why Bake with the Botanicals?
Before globalization made the same spices widely available around the globe, our ancestors used the plants that grew around them to flavor and nutrition to food. With a little knowledge, botanicals can expand our range of flavors, encouraging more creativity and thoughtfulness in the kitchen. Our goal is to embolden you to use them intuitively and joyfully, to use them in ways that feel decadent, nourishing, and restorative.
We’ll explore how these herbs support us in multiple dimensions, the spiritual, emotional, and physical. For instance, might add rose to a cake to support a friend with broken heart or rosemary to shortbread cookies to honor the memory of a departed ancestor. Chamomile can impart a tangy flavor to carrot cake without sourcing pineapple from across the world and nettles add vitamins and minerals to a lemon cake to build vitality.
How?
We’ll walk you through how a wide range of techniques— from infusing sugar and honey to using extracts to infusing creams— to seamlessly incorporate these plants into all your favorite recipes.
Note on Diets, Dietary Restrictions, and “Health”
This is food positive and body positive space! We welcome those looking to heal their relationship with food, and we reject the notion that ‘healthy’ foods don’t include dessert. We won’t shame any ingredients (no, not even sugar), and we know that every body has different needs and sensitivities! We’ll provide a range of recipes for those with dietary restrictions; there will always be notes on how to make things gluten or diary free. We’re herbalists, and so we’ll provide information about the functional uses of the botanicals we work with and how they can be used to support health goals, but the primary focus of this series is to explore the plants through the decadent lenses of food, flavor, and play.
Who is This Class For?
Herbalists looking to expand their practice to the kitchen; bakers who are curious about botanicals; beginners in either arena; and anyone who wants to add more sweetness to their life.
About the Bakers
ced (they/them) is a farmer, bodyworker and a rambling bramble on the magical plant path. as a baker they bring a no-recipe, abstract expressionist energy into the kitchen. they are an autoimmune dude who’s diet has flourished in a gf⚡️df mode with no lack of decadence. they specialize in seasonal upside down cakes and bizarre flavor combinations.
Favorite ingredients to bake with: sorghum flour, honey, miso
Favorite botanicals to bake with: fennel, lavender, rosemary
Abby (she/her), besides being farm manager here at Foxtrot, Abby is a total food geek whose main artistic expression is through cooking. In recovery from years of food restriction and disordered eating, Abby is grateful to be at a place in life where food is a locus of ease, connection, and play. She draws on her Slavic and Italian ancestry when devising recipes and believes in the credo “Your nose knows,” encouraging people to follow their intuition in the kitchen.
Favorite ingredients to bake with: wholegrain heirloom grains like spelt and einkorn, maple syrup, and butter.
Favorite botanicals to bake with: rose, chamomile, and sage