Quotes from Christina Tosi

Baking without gluten is an awesome challenge in terms of the opportunity to learn so much more about what you can create.

I was always taught to be myself, be honest, and be true to my roots.

I love the warmth of apple pie.

I love the challenge of thinking about how we might approach a bowl of cereal. People are getting so involved in foodie culture and becoming more educated about their food, and yet it can be really simple to do something that's so good for you.

I make a huge batch of cinnamon buns on Christmas Eve and bake them off early Christmas morning.

I was raised by my Depression-era grandma who taught me to use what you've got: Waste not, want not!

When I get up early, I appreciate the quiet time to enjoy a coffee or water my plants.

When you open any kind of food service establishment, you do all this planning, but it's not until you've opened the door and people are inside that you learn what people want you to be to them.

I was raised by a gaggle of women who all loved to bake. Dessert always existed after any savory meal. I was raised with cookies on the plate, brownies in a Tupperware container, and so on.

I can't think of a community that couldn't benefit from communal thinking.

At first, learning to bake was purely selfish, but I quickly learned I can't eat every batch of cookies myself, so I would bake and eat what I wanted and give the rest away. I fell in love with feeding others as much as I loved eating sweets myself.

Simple syrup doesn't taste like anything.

I love roasted pecans. I'll make a sort of granola with the roasted pecans, turn that into a super nutty pie crust, and top that with apple-syrup pudding and top that with cooked custard and maple syrup.

The secret to having an epically beloved bakery is consistency.

My family, as you can probably guess, was more into Christmas cookies and not so much the fruitcake.

Be your own biggest critic. Don't let someone else beat you to constructive criticism.

Every time I baked cookies for people as a kid, it made me so happy. But when I was in culinary school and working in fine-dining restaurants, that was not a thing.

I went to culinary school to eat.

Any team member, any community member wants and needs to know they count, that they're welcome, and that they're important.

Good food is good food. It doesn't have to come with pretense.

I didn't want a desk job; I knew I'd get bored.

I have this nook at Milk Bar that's my office, and my desk was just full of every box of Kellogg's cereal, and at different times during the day, I would open up a box, eat a bowl of cereal, and I live in a world of Post-it notes, so I would leave tasting notes on all the cereal.

Know who you are and stay true to it. Have a point of view, keep your head down when noise tries to drown out your inner voice, and whatever you do, keep pushing.

I'm not a normal person with normal tastebuds, so I'll save you all from cringing/dissing on my late night flavour pairings, but I will say when I was a kid, with little to no access to anything but my mother's pantry, I'd dip everything in ranch dressing, Miracle Whip, katsup, barbecue sauce, honey, mustard, etc.