Orange Blossom Goods is a celebration of creativity.
Before I started dipping dates, baking cookies, and bagging tea, I worked as a writer and creative director in the advertising world for 20 years. I wrote websites and social posts, directed video shoots, partnered with celebrity influencers, and turned ideas into real-world actions.
But despite all those things, I never felt creative. It all just felt like a job. And even though I did creative things, I never thought of myself as a creative person.
Like a lot of people, I didn’t think I had “it,” that natural ability to think creatively, to come up with story ideas, make art, play music. I didn’t even think I could make food, even though I’d loved watching cooking shows and learning about food for most of my life.
What I later understood is that creativity isn’t an innate talent, something that springs naturally from your mind and heart, but that it’s a skill. Like learning a language, an instrument, or any craft, it’s something that you practice, develop, and improve. Sure, some people might have more of an inclination towards a certain activity (no matter how much I practice the guitar, I’ll never be George Benson). But the idea that any activity is entirely out of reach just isn’t true.
With passion, dedication, and practice, anyone can learn, grow, and blossom.
Baking: it’s more than recipes
While I had been an interested home cook for many years, experimenting with recipes, tools, and techniques, baking always scared me.
If you read much about baking, you will often find the comparison that while cooking might be an art, baking is a science. Specific ingredients in specific quantities will react in specific ways to create an outcome, and a little too much of this or too little of that will lead to failure.
That was not how I worked.
With cooking, I liked to play fast and loose with the rules, adding in whatever I had on hand and being ok with “close enough.” So with the belief that baking was too detail-oriented for my mind, too unapproachable a technique for me to wrap my head around, I never took the time to get started.
It wasn’t just a matter of recipes and mindset. The other problem was that I just don’t find most baked goods to be, well, very good. Of course there are countless bakers who make amazing pastries, cakes, breads, and more, bringing deep technical skill and endless creativity to their craft.
But for beginners like me, that sort of thoughtful precision was unattainable. The internet was awash in recipes that all sounded like "caramel double chocolate brown sugar maple explosion cake”. These were recipes that substituted sweetness for flavor, convenience for craft, and despite the scientific side of baking, all seemed to be inconsistent and unreliable.
The technique of flavor
When I started baking, I tried to jump past all of these “food blog” recipes. I wanted to find the most professional, most tested versions I could. Problem was, these either confused me with technique, burdened me with precision, or just weren’t as interesting as I’d hoped.
Over time, and many, many cakes, cookies, and pastries, I learned that recipes would only get you so far. If I wanted to bake things I actually liked, I needed to learn to create the flavors that appealed to me. Things like bright citrus, subtle spice, and layers of flavor that all added up to a baked good that tasted more than the sum of its parts.
I still followed recipes, because making up your own is incredibly hard and best left to the professionals. But each time I found something I liked, I’d pull a piece of technique from that recipe and find ways to apply it in the next thing I made. I made vanilla sugar to add depth, rubbed orange zest into dry mixes, spread dulce de leche onto pie crust, and any number of other ways I found to add more flavor without making things sweeter.
I’m not saying this is the most original approach, and I’m sure plenty of bakers do all these same things (they must, since they taught me these techniques). But it made the recipes start to feel like my own.
Does every home baker want to be a microbakery?
I think anyone who is passionate about making food loves to share their creations with others. And anyone who works in baking will tell you that it’s a hard business. Sure, some bakeries thrive. But most don’t. The hours are hard, the work is hard, and the constant challenge of not wasting your work always looms overhead.
So how do you balance these opposing forces? There are bake sales and swaps, volunteering to be the baker for any and every occasion, even farmers markets. But all of these still raised challenges I wanted to avoid, like the daily grind of high-volume baking and the waste of unsold products. And I knew that if I didn’t find a way to share these things I loved with more people, I also wouldn’t have the opportunities to explore the creative ideas I wanted to develop.
Follow your heart, or follow your stomach?
Ultimately, I couldn’t pretend like I could compete with experienced professional bakers after just a few years of home projects. I can’t make croissants like a pro (though few of those even make them these days), I can’t decorate a cake like someone from a cooking competition. So what could I really bring to the table?
The answer was simply, me. All I could do was follow my heart, and do things exactly the way I wanted to do them.
One thing about the creative side of advertising is that every project requires compromise. You might have what you believe is the best, most unique, most interesting way to market a product, but no good idea survives the gauntlet of client review unscathed. So you revise, edit, or “Frankenstein” ideas together until what comes out is unrecognizable from what went in.
With my own creative pursuits, I knew that the only way I could make it work is if I let my heart lead the way. I would bring the approach that felt most natural to me, make the things that I actually wanted to make rather than the ones people expected to see, and let all my creative instincts and experience loose on everything I worked on.
And that’s how Orange Blossom Goods was born.
What is Orange Blossom Goods?
Orange blossom water is a floral and highly fragrant ingredient most commonly used in North African and Middle Eastern baking and sweets. A few drops is all it takes, and just a drop can be the difference between a subtle scent and an overpowering perfume.
It was my first secret weapon. While many traditional recipes center the ingredient, I started to find recipes that added a dash here and there, just enough that you knew something was there even if you weren’t sure what it was.
So like any enthusiastic creator, I started using it in everything, from cakes to cookies to ice cream. Eventually I scaled back and found strategic ways to add it when it truly helped. But what never left was the lesson: flavor can be built in countless ways, and not always the ones you expect.
I carried that approach into everything I did, testing different ingredients, additions, and techniques, and landing on less of a technical approach to baking and more of a philosophy.
When I decided to start this brand, I knew that inspiration had to be at the center of everything I do. Orange Blossom Goods stands for a deep curiosity about great foods, an inclusive and global approach to creation, and a passion for making a few things in the absolute best way I can.
Where it started, and where it’s going
Learning to be a baker and creator is a hard task. Starting a business is an even harder one. And starting a food business combines two really hard things into one incredibly hard thing. But at some point, you have to decide that doing what inspires you is worth it, whatever the outcome.
So I started with a few simple things. I ordered from farms and found the best Medjool dates I could. I made cookies, but I scaled back the sugar and packed them with things that made for a unique eating experience for your eyes and your stomach. I spent two years making variations of an evening tea, testing different ingredients and exploring ratios until I found something that was flavorful and approachable enough to be enjoyed every day.
The hardest part might actually have been stopping there. Because if there’s one thing I’m not short on, it’s ideas. I want to make something new every day, then make it better, and then share it with people.
I’m bursting with inspiration from all the microbakeries doing weekend pickups and the lone creators sharing their passions at farmers markets. I dream about following my creative instincts, and putting the best ideas before the most profitable ones. And I hope to share the things that bring such joy to me with anyone I can, so that I can create some of that same feeling for them.
That’s why I say that Orange Blossom Goods isn’t about food, it’s about a feeling. Freedom, creativity, happiness, simplicity: this is what guides what I make, and it’s what I hope the things I make bring to you.