Silsbee teen making culinary dream a reality

The Silsbee teen’s journey to small business baker began as a toddler in her family kitchen.

Mom Candace Perry recalls 2-year-old Emily perched atop the counter as she baked for family occasions.

“She loved to add the ingredients and stir,” Perry said, laughing that back then, more ingredients ended up on the counter than in the bowl.

That wasn’t a problem for long.

Within years, Emily was flying solo in the kitchen, keeping the family stocked with home-baked cookies, muffins, cakes and breads as her love for baking grew.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” joked Candace, while digging into one of the blueberry muffins Emily had pulled fresh from the oven, a spread of butter melted on top before setting out a plate for her mom and brother Miles to enjoy.

Early on, Emily said, “I’d bake when I was in the mood for it or if I wanted something (sweet to eat), but the past two years, I started doing it almost every night and I really loved it.”

“One year she even made the cupcakes for her own birthday,” Candace recalled. When the family stayed with relatives amid home construction, it wasn’t unusual to wake up to the sounds of Emily baking late into the night, Perry said.

Emily loves the creativity that baking affords.

Starting from a base recipe, Emily scans the pantry for “anything else I can add. I like to flip it, even the basics like the flour or sugar. Sometimes the final (recipe) doesn’t even match the original at all,” she said.

Family and friends are the test market as she experiments. Younger brother Miles is the self-proclaimed “quality control’ tester for his sister’s creations – and also her volunteer “egg cracker.”

“I eat a lot of it too,” Emily said of her creative process, but more often than not, “I just get a feeling – ‘Yeah, this is it.’”

Baking provides another, more personal outlet, she said.

“Whenever I would get really stressed, it was a good getaway. Like, if a big test was coming up, I’d make cookies. I’d just put in my ear buds and focus on baking,” Emily said, adding with a smile, “and also, you get cookies.”

But one of the greatest joys was seeing “the reaction on people’s faces when they tried something I made and really liked it. It made me feel really great,” she said.

That’s a reaction she’s seen a lot of in her few years as a baker.

Emily would bake “things to take to the doctors (at Riceland where her mother worked); people liked it, and they’d start asking for more,” she recalled.

People at her church liked them too, as did family and friends for whom she’d bring baked goods for holidays or parties.

Soon, Emily was getting requests so regularly, the cost of baking for free became difficult.

It was an order regular that suggested Emily charge for her baked goods, asking, “What can I pay you? You shouldn’t be doing this for free.”

Soon she began leaning a new skill — pricing. Step-dad Shuja Pakhliwal offered his business acumen to help Emily navigate the start of what would become her foray into small business ownership.

“We figured out how much it cost to make each item and also how much time it took to make them, then looked up the going rate for similar goods at other bakeries,” Emily said.

“I wanted it to be fair for everyone,” she said, adding, “fair for them, but also fair to me, just knowing the quality of everything.”

Setting a price on the quality of a product requires a level of confidence in one’s self and work that any creator – be it in baking, music or art – has to muster.

“She always knew it was good, but, ‘For the price, is it THAT good?’” is a hard lesson to master, Candace said, and “learning to accept money from loved ones” has been another steep learning curve.

But it’s one Emily’’s mastered so far with her orders steadily increasing.

Her most popular baked goods are blueberry muffins so densely filled with fresh fruit, there’s a burst of blueberry in every bite; chocolate chip cookies; and chocolate crinkle cookies sprinkled with powdered sugar.

“I’m always asked to bring those to parties,” she said.

She also has family recipes, like a nut roll and strawberry pie, from her grandparents.

Emily won’t tinker with those recipes out of respect for her grandparents, but she has plenty of originality on her plate as it is.

All of the five muffin, five cake, two pie and 8 cookie recipes on her website are of her own making, and shes come up with names for each.

“I want names to keep it fun,” she said, like the one named cookie so far on her list – a red velvet cookie she’s dubbed “The Redhead.” Whatever they’re called, Emily’s baked goods are selling like hot cakes.

“It grew so fast; I can’t even say how fast it grew,” Candace Perry said of her daughter’s business.

That growth reached an all-time high on Valentine’s Day, when Emily had orders for 11-dozen muffins, three-dozen cookies, and one strawberry cake.

It was a lesson in both stress and time management.

Emily pre-made her cookie dough the night before, then awoke early to bake them, followed by the muffins and cake just in time for pick-up.

“She got a system going, and she got it done. I don’t help her at all. I don’t even know any of the recipes,” Candace said.

“They’re all in my head,” Emily added.

It may be a secret vault of baked gold she’ll have to unlock if orders ramp up to the equivalent of Valentine’s Day on a regular basis, Emily acknowledged, adding, “I’ll definitely need help if I open my own place.”

In the meantime, Emily’s finding a way to manage her time as a teen and entrepreneur — meeting bakery orders, working on baking skills, being a home-schooled high schooler and working her part-time job two or three days a week at Quenchies in Lumberton.

It’s a dance she’s managed through discipline and determination.

Most of her orders are due by morning, meaning Emily’s day typically begins at 6 a.m., baking to fill the daily deadlines before turning her attention to school.

“I tend to do schoolwork based around my orders,” Emily said.

“She hasn’t had much trouble juggling things between work, baking and school,” her mother said, adding, “her grades haven’t suffered at all.”

Emily says the experience has actually helped with her studies.

“I’m doing consumer math now, and doing this has helped a lot with concepts like calculating overhead or the math involved when you have to make recipe reductions,” she explained.

There’s also the marketing side of business — something that her mother, a nurse turned healthcare marketing professional at Riceland, can help.

The pair collaborated on the name and logo for Emily’s business.

“We’re all ‘gingers,’” said Candace, whose hair hints toward the strawberry blonde side of Emily’s true red.

A flowering ginger root and fingers adding a sprinkle of ingredients surround the company name scripted in a font of Emily’s choosing.

It’s a logo she can bring to a future bakery storefront — a possibility that looks increasingly less remote than merely a childhood dream.

“I always thought about opening a bakery — that would be super cool — and now that I have this, I definitely want to open up a place,“ Emily said.

“I thought about doing a cookbook in the future, as well,” she added.

“When you’re employed by yourself, it’s hard to know how well you’re gonna do or how it’s gonna grow,” Candace said, adding that for now, “It’s a good experience to be a business at home until we get to that point of opening a bakery.”

And it gives Emily time to expand her repertoire.

“I have a whole Pinterest board of recipes I’d like to try,” she said, and “once a week I try to make something new, then work on perfecting it.”

“I’ve pretty much got everything down, but bread is still hard, because the yeast has to be mixed the precisely right amount to get the right density, and different breads have different densities,” she said.

Macaroons are also on the list.

“I’ve been looking at recipes to try, but the weather has to be just right when you make macaroons,” Emily noted.

And then there are cakes, which Emily said “are definitely one of the big things” on her perfection to-do list, particularly icing recipes and decorating.

Candace said a retired cake decorator friend has offered lessons to help, and she anticipates having even more photos and videos of Emily’s handiwork to share.

“It’s hard not to brag on her,” said Candace, who knows bragging rights may grow with her daughter’s ongoing success and future aspirations.

After high school, Emily plans to pursue a degree in business and eventually culinary school.

For now, “we’re playing it more step-by-step,” Candace said.

“She has some long-term goals, but we don’t focus on them so hard, and just try to be open to change and learning not to be afraid of failure,” she added.

That’s a lesson she’s instilled in both her children.

“If you don’t try something, you’ll never know what you can or can’t do. And if you focus on failure, you’ll never push yourself to take a risk or to try harder. Don’t be afraid to work hard, and if you fail, you fail…then one door closes and another opens,” Candace said.

It’s a lesson Emily has put to use; whether it be in tweaking a recipe or becoming a business owner.

“A lot of kids talk about what they want to be when they grow up, like, ‘I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a doctor,’ and I always said, ‘I want to open my own bakery,’ and now I’m actually doing it,” Emily said.

Ultimately, the best recipe for achieving your dream isn’t much different than concocting one for the perfect chocolate chip cookie, Emily noted — “Just go for it. You never know until you try.”