If you think you might know someone passionate about flowers, think again as this California baker takes botanics to a whole new level. Lori Stern has more than 100k followers on Instagram and her cookie selling business is flourishing.
Lori started as a private baker making small orders and baking for pleasure, now she shares her creations with people all over the world and her cookbook is available too.
The idea to create edible flower cookies came to chef quite naturally. When she was helping at her friend’s Flower Power themed party, she came up with the idea to add flowers to cookies. Ever since then it has become one of the most prominent features of her baking. In fact, her creations were so good that even Oprah magazine mentioned it in one of the issues. And after she was noticed by Oprah, Vogue, New York Times and many others wanted to find out more about this chef.
Lori loves creating delicious and healthy foods and grows most of the flowers in her own organic garden. She uses flowers in cookies, cakes and even savory dishes. While sweet shortbread cookies is what made her famous, she also makes creative menus and cooks great meals for any occasion. If you have a special event planned in California or nearby, Lori offers catering in fact a sample menu is available at her personal website.
The baker loves vibrant colors and adds them using flowers to her dishes. She doesn’t stop there as she uses leaves, rose petals and even adds flowers to the cookie dough. Her cookies look like something that you would imagine the Victorians would eat, nevertheless, it is fully organic and can be adapted as Lori’s cooking is mainly focused on vegan, paleo and gluten-free. As she lives in sunny California, flowers are available all year round so baking doesn’t stop. She even has seasonal special cookies available!
Lori Stern is a self-trained baker. She watched Youtube tutorials to learn new skills and to master her skills she worked in restaurants and bakeries. Her business really started to grow when she joined Instagram. This allowed her to reach new audiences and her cookies now travel all across the US. They last up to 30 days but unlike many other places she doesn’t mass produce her shortbread creations and only ships them once a week. She is really open about her ingredients and practices and makes sure the materials she uses are recyclable and only uses packaging that is required.
Lori supports local farmers and uses homegrown organic ingredients which are the pride and joy of her little business. She enjoys catering for parties and her specially made cakes might surprise you. While many bakers go for the look and design of the cake, Lori makes sure her specialty cakes have her signature flowers on them and are made of organic ingredients. Cakes start at $500 which feed around 35 guests. The cake flavours are unusual too and include tea, carrot, zucchini spice, matcha and olive oil.
