8 Things to Know About Joy the Baker
Photo: Courtesy Joy Wilson
In the world of baking and blogging, Joy Wilson is a household name. Since 2008, she has been sharing recipes, tips, and tricks via her upbeat blog, aptly named Joy the Baker. In the years since, she has built a solid fan base (150,000+ followers on Instagram alone) and published two cookbooks. The latest, Homemade Decadence: Irresistibly Sweet, Salty, Gooey, Sticky, Fluffy, Creamy, Crunchy Treats, came out last month and is a true delight for the sweet-tooth set.
“When I realized I could make sweet things out of a group of not very sweet things that we had in our house, it felt like magic,” Wilson said of discovering baking as a child. “I could take unsweetened baking squares and brown sugar and a few other things and get what my parents wouldn’t buy at the grocery story. It was like the greatest hack in the world.”
She was working full-time at a bakery and close to graduation from the University of Washington at Seattle when she started blogging. “I thought, ‘Let me see what happens if I put my recipes on the Internet.’” It took time to find and cultivate an audience, but she wasn’t discouraged. “I just kept doing it,” said Wilson. “The key to blogging is persistence.”
Here are some other things home baking enthusiasts should know about Joy Wilson:
1. Wilson’s parents were health food fans when she was a child.
“They were early adapters of gnarly, super-crunchy health food. The food in our house was always very, very healthy—stuff that a 6-year-old doesn’t want to eat. ‘Can I please get a chicken nugget?’ We had seitan nuggets instead. I made my own school lunch. I would take a can of tuna and put it in a little Tupperware, then take an apple and whatever kind of weird whole wheat crackers I could find, plus whole wheat Fig Newtons, and a juice box. My weird lunches made me appreciate other people’s lunches. Oreos? If you had Oreos in your lunch that meant you had Oreos in your house! Oreo cookies in your house? That was crazy.”
2. Her beloved Aunt Dede, who was blind, taught her how to bake.
“She was my dad’s older sister and she was a schoolteacher. When she was in her 30s, she had a brain tumor and lost her vision. She was always the best baker in the family. She lived with my grandparents and I would go there all the time when my parents were at work and watch her bake. She taught me a lot about how ingredients are supposed to feel. She couldn’t see the things she was putting together, so she had to feel them and she knew what her cake batter should feel like. She made everyone’s birthday cakes and her specialty was 7UP pound cake and an Araby spice cake. The recipe for that is in my first cookbook.”
3. She worked for Ben & Jerry’s. Twice.
“The summer before I was supposed to leave for college, I was like, ‘You know what? New plan. I am not going to college. Instead, I’m going to move to Burlington, Vermont, and work for Ben & Jerry’s.’ My parents said, ‘Okay. If you go, good luck. Don’t come back and ask us for money. You can’t move back in. You are making your own choices now.’ I was like, ‘Okay, here we go.’ So I just called Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop in Burlington and explained my situation. ‘Hi, I’m Joy. I worked at Ben & Jerry’s here in Los Angeles. I’m moving to Burlington and I would like to have a job with you. Is that possible?’ and they were like, ‘Yeah, sure. Just let us know when you get here.’ I lived in Burlington for a year and it was just so cold. I’ve never been so cold in all my life, but it was really fun.”
4. She launched her blog with a borrowed computer, camera, and wireless.
“I had borrowed a friend’s camera. He taught me how to use one mode on his large fancy camera. He said, ‘This is really the only setting you need for what you’re trying to do.’ Then I borrowed a computer from a friend of mine. I used my neighbor’s unlocked wireless Internet for two years of blogging until they moved. It was all very haphazard. I also took a lot of photos for my blog on my flip phone at the bakery where I was working. It was pretty humble, but I took it seriously because I liked doing it. I wasn’t at all thinking it could be a career.”
5. Getting fired from her restaurant job was a good thing.
“One day, the restaurant I was working at did a clean sweep and I got fired. I thought, ‘Okay, well, here we are.’ I could print out more resumes and do this hustle again, or I could try to spin this blog into something. It wasn’t a seamless transition; I had to completely change my lifestyle. I left the apartment I lived in by myself and moved in with three weird roommates and cut down on everything. No more gym, no more superfluous nice things. I did that for about a year. In that time, I wrote my first cookbook proposal and really tried to work the content on my site to build more of a community and bring more traffic and make a living.”
6. Her second cookbook took two years to create.
“I shot the book, styled it and wrote all the recipes. I’m really proud of it. There are 125 recipes, most of them brand new and not from the website. I tried to make them as decadent but as doable and approachable as I could. I wanted there to be an element of ‘Oh, that’s great,’ and a little element of surprise in each recipe. I want you to feel like you could pick up the book, flip to a page, and have most of those ingredients in your house.”
7. Her most treasured cookbook is by Dorie Greenspan.
“I really love Dorie’s Baking: From My Home To Yours. A friend of mine bought that for me just before I started my blog because I couldn’t afford it. I love that book because she’s a great teacher and her recipes are really reliable.”
8. She never orders dessert in a restaurant.
“I hate to be disappointed by dessert. I would rather not order it.”
Sweet recipes to try:
Make Your Own Moon Pies
Homemade Caramel Apples
Hillbilly Fudge (Made with Velveeta)
Do you love to bake? How did you learn and what do you love to make?
