Pastry Chef & cook book author, Marianne Stewart
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What’s your favourite Bird item and what do you love about it? |
The Red Heron apron - I'm absolutely in love with it. This is clothing for people who live and breathe food! |
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Tell us about your first food memory? |
Aged 5, mixing flour & water to make a weird “pastry” with my sister, baking it, then trying to feed it to my parents. And wondering why they didn’t ever want to taste it! |
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When did you start your journey in the industry? |
I did a Cordon Bleu course in cookery after I finished school and worked as a private chef during my uni days. I then got into doing a PhD, but quit after 2 years and moved down to London to work as a pastry chef. I started in a patisserie kitchen and just kept following my feet. |
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What is your go-to staple meal? |
Um, I mostly bake, so although I am a trained chef I am very lazy about cooking for myself! Frittata is a good one when I’m working from home as it’s quick, nutritious and you can use up all sorts of odds and ends from the fridge. |
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What made you choose food as a way to make a living? |
The sense of connection and creativity. I moved out of an industry (academia) that was quite isolating and into one where you can make small pieces of happiness for people everyday. |
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Which 5 ingredients can always be found in your kitchen? |
lemons, salt, sugar, flour of some variety (not always plain white) and either butter or plant butter depending on what recipes I am testing! |
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What is your most favourite project that you’ve worked on in the past five years? |
Probably my book, Nourish Cakes! But anything that involves recipe development as I love being creative, detailed and just having a tinker in the kitchen. |
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Where can people connect with you? (socials/ your kitchen)? |
I half live on instagram! @mariannebakes is the easiest way to find me and catch up with what I’m doing. |
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What are you working on at the moment? |
I am doing a lot of recipe development for different food businesses and working on getting my next online vegan baking course up! |
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You’re gifting a cookbook to a good friend, what’s an absolute must-have? |
Would depend on the friend and how into baking/cooking they are. For home baking, Dan Lepard’s Short & Sweet - approachable, but plenty of explaining the why of baking. For experienced bakers, Tartine Book number 3 is a classic everyone should have. Lots of brilliant recipes with alternative flours. For cooking, Claire Thompson’s Home Cookery Year. |
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How do you practice sustainability in the kitchen? |
My sister is a sustainability consultant so this is an area I care about a lot, but also struggle with because so much of my job is inherently wasteful. I think it works best when you allow yourself to make small incremental changes gradually. I try to re-use as much as possible - I never throw out a jam jar! And being inventive with ingredients so I waste as little food as possible. Also, it’s great practice to share baking kit with fellow buddies so you don’t have to buy things you only use once or infrequently. |
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What do you listen to when you’re cooking? |
Podcasts or lots of Taylor Swift! |
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Please share your favourite recipe |
