A step inside the Sweet Kitchen

On a Saturday night, strangers gather around Cynthia Baumann’s kitchen island to learn something new.

Every cooking class is different.

They learn to cook authentic Italian recipes while following Baumann’s instructions at her Forest Lane home.

Cooking classes began in 2021, an extension of her  baking business, Cucina Dolce, which started in 2019.

Baumann was born in Milan, Italy, but moved to Boston with her family when she was 18 months old. She grew up in an Italian household surrounded by Boston’s Italian culture. There, her parents and grandparents grew their fresh vegetables and made homemade pasta, wine, prosciutto, sausages, cheese — everything.

Baumann would fondly watch her mother in the kitchen, regularly assisting her mother and Nonna with Italian recipes from the Campagna region. At that time, she wasn’t as interested in cooking as the rest of her family was but found an interest in being creative with her hands.

Years later, she realized how much she enjoyed hosting dinner parties.

“Cooking is a way to present things to people that they love and you see when they taste it how happy they are,” Baumann says. “It’s not ever for the compliments. It’s the gratification.”

People at her dinner parties would often tell her she needed to make a business to share more of her food with others.

After looking around Dallas and noticing the lack of authentic Southern Italian bakeries, she pulled out her favorite cookie and cake recipes.

Some baked goods include traditional Neapolitan struffoli with bright orange lemon zests. Another is the Sicilian fig cookies with dried Turkish figs and toasted walnuts, wrapped around a pastry dough with nonpareils, or sprinkles, on top. And the orange ricotta cookies are an Italian staple with freshly-grated orange zest and a vanilla-orange glaze.

Once online, she slowly started to receive orders.

The first order came around Christmas from someone on NextDoor. The first customer ordered three things off the menu.

“I was a little bit nervous,” Baumann recalls. “I wanted to do a good job. She said, ‘I’m so glad I found you.’”

Orders continued to come in and Baumann was baking for special events.

“I do everything from the very beginning to the end and when an order comes in, I’m passionate because my attention goes just to that person,” she says.

Her biggest week to date was last November when there were three weddings in one weekend, where she made over 1,500 different types of cookies and a wedding cake.

She swears the classes were born from a “fluke.”

Around 2021, Baumann saw an online ad for a restaurant that needed pastry chefs. She was confident in her abilities and wasn’t looking for a job, but decided to apply for fun.

“I was enjoying what I was doing at home and I just wanted an interview to see how they see me,” Baumann says.

During the trial interview, Baumann made about 50 tiramisus in four hours. She remembers the recipe not being authentic to Italy. It had too much cream, no liquor and didn’t use espresso for the coffee taste.

The experience led her to teach her own classes and the first class was of course, tiramisu, the right way.

Now, a couple more years into her at-home bakery business and cooking classes, she’s seen momentum as she prepares for another client needing over 900 cookies. Baumann recognizes the irony in how far she’s come from her childhood and only cooking when her mother needs another hand.

“[My mother] wishes that I had an interest in cooking when I was younger and we could’ve had a family business,” she jokes. “Now, I’m teaching her.”

On the occasional weekend, she’ll host a maximum of four guests at her house for an intimate cooking lesson. On those nights, she’s known to teach anything from homemade pasta to a Tuscan soup to chicken marsala. Throughout the class, Baumann explains the methods in the steps, more information about the dish, and at the end, they enjoy a meal together.

“We’ll just cook and have a good time,” Baumann says. “I wanted it to be different with a few people. They each partake in every step so that they can say ‘I’ve done this.’”

The guests range from all levels of experience and all ages, from an 80-year-old who hasn’t held an electric mixer in years to a 20-year-old who is new to cooking.

“We all become little friends just for that moment,” Baumann says.

Cucina Dolce, cucina-dolce.com