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Paula Simon

Family and travel are my priorities!  In many ways I am the quintessential “Jewish Mom”, feeding, baking, hosting holiday meals, and indulging my kids and grandkids.  For each of my daughters’ destination weddings, I baked and transported more than 30 dozen treats to serve at their welcome dinners.  When I’m not home in my kitchen or visiting my daughters in Los Angeles, I can often be found traveling internationally with my husband.  Next stop, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand in 2025.

What or who inspired your love of baking? 

Growing up I had an aunt who occasionally baked cakes, a cousin who decorated them, and a grandmother who made apple pie, but homemade in my house typically meant “Slice and Bake Cookies” or a boxed brownie mix. With excellent local bakeries and Sara Lee frozen cakes always in our freezer, baking was unnecessary. When I moved from California to Minnesota after graduate school the winters were dark, cold, and long, I was unfamiliar with the bakeries and certainly wasn’t going to drive to a grocery store in a snowstorm – all inspiring me to start baking!   

What’s your favorite thing to bake? 

Literally anything that makes my family and friends happy and doesn’t require significant decorating skills (my weakness).  For my daughters, it is always chocolate cheesecake. For my sons-in-law, breakfast date bars or my aunt’s recipe for a sour cream streusel coffee cake. My husband won’t turn down a cookie. Most recently and importantly, anything that my 6- and 3-year-old grandchildren can help me bake is my “favorite”.  We’ve made cupcakes, brownies, snacking cakes, chocolate chip cookies and challah.

Maureen Heagney

In her free time, Maureen pursues any opportunity to pet her pug, perfect a pastry, or put pen to paper.

When the need to travel for her job began to wane in the early 2000s, Maureen decided it was time to adopt a pug and since has had the pleasure of loving three dogs. Her current snorty escort is Bunter, who she adopted in March 2024.

With a passion for testing different dessert recipes, lately Maureen has settled on producing eye-catching cakes for children. She loves nothing better than taking on themes for kids who have asked for anything from circus animals to horror films to Harry Potter’s pal Dobby. Her favorite cake to date was for a young girl who liked the circus.

Maureen was first recognized for her creative writing prowess in 4th grade for inking the most unique Easter story. Eventually, this penchant morphed into a career that involved marketing, employee and customer communications. Stuck inside during the pandemic, Maureen got to write for herself for the first time in years, having signed up for a series of six-week online writing classes where she wrote daily for two years. Now as a co-ambassador for Cake4Kids, she enjoys writing thank you notes for Sonoma/Napa county’s spectacular bakers.

What or who inspired your love of baking?

Unquestionably, it was my mother. She baked all the time for family, friends, and neighbors. I grew up in a close-knit community at a time when everyone knew everyone else. My mother's baking skills were known far and wide. Our grammar school had a monthly "hot dog lunch" where cupcakes were part of the fare. Students in my class would ask me what my mother baked so they could choose one of hers when they went through the cafeteria line. 

What was your biggest #bakingfail? Zabaglione?

When I was 19 I hosted an Italian-themed dinner for my sister's birthday. It was a surprise, so I went to my parents’ house to make the dessert. I misread the recipe and the custard ended up with a consistency like mud, it jammed the beaters on my mother's ancient hand mixer and sent custard flying all over the kitchen.

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