Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabby Sanchez.
Hi Gabby, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Ironically enough, my baking journey started as a hobby to cope with stress. In high school, I was very invested in fine arts. I loved, and continue to love, drawing and painting using every medium possible. One day my sophomore year, I realized that the fine arts would be an incredibly difficult field to be successful in for me. From then on, I started thinking of more realistic careers I could work in and started looking into business schools. As the application time of my junior year of high school was approaching, I was so stressed out that I would stay up all night baking until the sun came up. Finally, one day it clicked. I could do all three while doing baking and pastry.
My parents were fully supportive of this career choice and even brought me to some prospective student tours at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY. I instantly fell in love with the campus and the rest is history. I started there in July of 2015 and graduated two years later with my associate’s degree in Baking and Pastry. Before I graduated, I was having a pre-graduation crisis, as most college students do, and luckily enough for me, I was a tour guide and there was a career fair a couple months before graduation. There I met the chef of a luxury resort in Saratoga Wyoming and took a leap of faith and agreed to go work there for their late spring to early fall season. I fell in love with Wyoming, it was vastly different from the climate I grew up in, environmentally as well as politically. I learned how to appreciate everyone’s differences and adapt to different environments while keeping true to who I am.
After my first season in Wyoming, my boyfriend and I took another jump into the unknown and moved out to Napa, California. I had worked five months at Bouchon Bakery and my boyfriend has worked at The French Laundry. I honed my skills as a baker but did not enjoy the atmosphere the restaurant group portrayed. The patriarchal system that was in place was not an environment that someone like me could thrive in. Luckily enough one of our chefs from Wyoming had come out for a Relais & Chateaux event called Gourmet Fest in Monterey California with a lot of heavy hitters, different well-decorated chefs from across the globe all working under the prestigious title of “Relais & Chateaux.” We noticed that the event was only a couple of hours away from where we were living at the time and asked if we could come help. We worked along such talented chefs and they inspired us to be greater than where we were at and that we didn’t have to personify the characteristics that our chefs at the TKRG and coworkers had.
We returned back to -the- adults only, Forbes 5 Star, and Relais & Chateaux part of the resort called Magee Homestead. We worked there for two more seasons and in between the first off-season, we had be gifted the opportunity of working in another luxury hotel, with the same award, Calabash Luxury Boutique Hotel in Grenada. We worked there for about three months and returned back to Wyoming. That final offseason we helped the larger company that owned the ranch, open up two hotels; one in Louisville, KY and one in Austin, TX. My boyfriend had been promoted within the company and we had relocated to the border of Indiana and Chicago. Covid happened and we had stayed in Texas for most of it, and once we returned, I started working as a Pastry Chef in Chicago with the DMK Restaurant Group. I loved the people I worked with, however, I found myself losing passion while doing mundane tasks. As work environments started to adapt to the ever-changing Covid guidelines, the workload began to increase and I found myself doing things I normally wouldn’t be responsible for and started to lose interest. My boyfriend had come to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be happy until we were working for ourselves.
Once we accepted that thought, we had migrated back to Denton, TX and that’s when I started working on my business Cookie Thief Cake Co full time. We started working at the Denton Community Market every Saturday and started working other events in the area like Every Witch Way and the Mosaic Markets. It has been a lot of hard work but it has never been more fulfilling, and I am so grateful that every choice has led me to this point.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Building Cookie Thief Cake Co has definitely been a winding and bumpy road. We started off with essentially nothing but our drive to succeed. In the beginning, we bought a table, some cheap lawn chairs, a tent, and borrowed a worn cooler to bring to our first market. From there we’ve managed to turn all of our profits back into the company and we’ve slowly been adding more equipment to our arsenal.
I would say the biggest struggle we faced when we started was financial security. Opening up a small business is difficult in its own right, but leaving the security of a corporate job with a standard salary is even harder. Luckily enough we have a big support group in Texas and we’ve had people to help us out in times of need and we are forever grateful.
At this moment in time, we’ve jumped over so many hurdles and hoops that there are too many to count. But what I can say is that as a business owner, you have to be able to adapt. For instance, we are currently trying to open up our own food trailer with New American cuisine, called “Insurgent”, and we thought the road would be relatively straightforward, but it has been the complete opposite. Every task on our to-do list usually has little added subtasks underneath it. But all we can do is figure out the best way to approach it and push through it. The process of opening our trailer has taken much longer than we had expected but as we look back, we’ve come so far since we’ve had the idea to open one. We finally have our custom trailer is possession, we have power, we have gas all we need is a couple more things and we’re ready to roll. The thing that keeps us going is our passion for food, and we truly love getting to share it with people.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
After graduating from The Culinary Institute of America, I started my professional pastry career in 2017. Since then, I’ve been specializing and honing in on different skills and techniques within the field. When my boyfriend and I moved to Napa, I was on the macaron station at Bouchon Bakery, so I would make hundreds of macarons every day from sun up to sundown. When I worked at Magee Homestead in Saratoga, WY I made countless mignardises and plated desserts. When I was working in Chicago, I truly developed my skills in making laminated dough and my croissant game excelled. Being granted the opportunity to work at so many different places has shaped who I am as a pastry chef.
In the pastry department, I am definitely known for my plated desserts. I love playing with different textures, flavors and making sure that everything is aesthetically pleasing. It’s the most rewarding to be able to put many different techniques into one cohesive dish. I believe that my education and experience sets me apart from most bakers. With Cookie Thief Cake Co, I take pride in making well-balanced, delicious, and beautiful treats for every occasion.
I think the achievement that I am most proud of is that I was featured on Food Network’s “Chopped Sweets” Season 1 Episode 9. It was so stressful but I loved every minute of it, and not a lot of people can say that they did it let alone make it to the final round!
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
A couple fun facts about me include that I used to dance competitively in middle school and actually competed in the World Championships of Theatre Dance in Reisa Germany on the U. S team! I also used to work for an entertainment company in high school called Magical Memories Entertainment and I used to do balloon animals, glitter tattoos, face paint, and costume characters. Another fact is that I love metal music and everyone thinks that’s ironic whenever they meet me.
Contact Info:
- Email: cookiethiefcakeco@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cookiethiefcakeco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cookiethiefcakeco
Image Credits:
Gabby Sanchez
