We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephanie Guinnane. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephanie below.

Stephanie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

It may sound cliche to come from a baker, but the kitchen has been one of my greatest teachers. It’s not only where I physically learned the basics of baking and recipe development but also where I got to learn from my favorite mentors. My dad taught me how to improvise – you may have a recipe, but it’s ok to make things up as you go. My mom taught me to follow my passion – helping my 13-year-old self get her first business off the ground. And my great-grandma taught me that patience and consistency are the keys to unlocking your craft. While I can see those lessons now, it took a long time for them to come into focus. I spent many years running in circles, taking all the courses and reading all the books, until I realized that I would only move forward by doing it. It wasn’t until I quite literally got my hands dirty, made mistakes (even repeated mistakes), and learned from them that I was able to see consistent improvement in my craft.

Stephanie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Some of my earliest memories are tinkering around in the kitchen, experimenting with different ingredients, and trying to find the best dessert recipes to share with my friends and family. Over the years, my determination to share with as many people as I could has led to several small businesses. In high school, I started my first baking business, selling my great-grandma’s ‘famous’ pies. In college, I found the world of cake decorating, where I honed my skills to later start a custom cake business which further evolved into custom cookies and macarons. Today, I am still determined to share my passion for baking with the world, just in a slightly different medium – digitally. My food blog, Night Owls Baking Co., is where I not only get to combine many of my passions – recipe development, photography, teaching, and digital media – but I also get to encourage my readers to explore their creative side and provide them tools for making approachable, fun, and delicious recipes.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Prior to the pandemic, I had a custom cake business that I operated out of my home bakery. After the pandemic hit, it made it very difficult to keep things running safely. Like many others, I was stuck at home looking for ways to fill my time, so I decided to pick back up a side project that I had not touched in a while – blogging. As I was getting back into photography, writing, experimenting, and sharing new recipes, something started to wake up creatively for me. I began to realize that while I loved that my cake business granted me the opportunity to create unique cake designs, I was struggling with the limitations of a service-based business model. My creative side was yearning for something with a bit more freedom of expression. So as things began to open back up, I made the decision to pivot from selling custom cakes to sharing my recipes online, which was a very hard decision, but ultimately the right one for me.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

By nature, I am an over-thinker and a bit of a perfectionist. As I mentioned, I started blogging during the pandemic, but it was probably about 5 years prior that I had the idea of starting one in the first place. I was quickly overwhelmed with all the things that I felt I needed to learn before I could even start, and so I didn’t. I had to unlearn the idea that I had to have it all figured out, that I had to master every piece before I could even begin. Sometimes, it’s better to just jump in, knowing that you might fall and that the faster I do, the faster I will get where I want to go. Mistakes will be made, but you should never let that hold you back from taking that next step.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nightowlsbaking.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nightowlsbakingco/
• Facebook: ​​https://www.facebook.com/nightowlsbakingco/

Image Credits
Portraits: Photos by Meg Marie Photography – www.megmariephoto.com
Food photography: Stephanie Guinnane