Zoë Francois, Instagram’s Favorite Baking Teacher, on Her Biggest Baking Challenge (and the Dessert She’ll Never Make Again)
One of Zoë Francois’ favorite fun facts is that her first ever food gig was as an ice cream cake maker at Ben & Jerry’s, a mecca in her home state of Vermont. “They just put a piping bag in my hand and I went nuts,” Zoë (of @ZoeBakes fame) explained to Kitchn, shedding some light on one of the many moments in life that made her fall in love with sugar.
Eight cookbooks, almost 150,000 Instagram followers, and one extremely popular baking blog later, Zoë still keeps a piping bag on deck at all times (for obvious reasons). The professional pastry chef is a teacher first and foremost, hosting classes in and around Minneapolis where she lives with her husband, Graham, and their two teenaged sons. She also keeps busy posting easy-to-follow baking tutorials on social media for fans near and far.
In an extremely stacked field of swoon-worthy baking Instagrammers, Zoë somehow stands out with a feed that feels like a magazine spread you can’t help but linger over a little longer than usual. We got a chance to chat with Zoë so that she could bestow some of her baking secrets upon us, but what we ultimately learned is that she doesn’t believe in keeping secrets!
You grew up with parents who taught you that raisins were candy. But now you make desserts for a living. Did your low-sugar childhood affect your present career?
I think it had the opposite effect than what my parents were going for! It just created this obsession. Once I learned that things like Twinkies existed, I was non-stop all about sugar.
In all honesty, though, I did the same thing with my own kids too. Little kids don’t need sugar, but Halloween did them in. There was no stopping that train. I didn’t want to be as black-and-white as my parents were when I was growing up — not that it turned out so badly!
Biggest baking challenge to date?
I am working on one today! My husband is from Trinidad. His grandmother used to bake this black cake, which is a really awesome rum-soaked fruitcake, every year at Christmas and for special occasions. We had one at our wedding and we’ve been together for 30 years. She passed away and didn’t leave anyone the recipe. I got really close a couple of days ago — it tasted like it but didn’t look anything like it. But I’m determined to get this. I’ll try something, want to recreate it, and it will drive me mad until I get it.
The trick with this one is to somehow get a bottle of rum into an eight-inch cake. You could light this cake on fire.
Last thing you made that you really loved?
This is going to sound old-fashioned, but I just made a pineapple upside-down cake — not the kind you’re thinking of — with fresh pineapple. I put it in the Vitamix, juiced it up. There was caramel everywhere. When my family tried it, there was a bit of swearing.
I like retro desserts, but when you make them, they don’t always live up to your memory of them. Baking has come a long way; people are pushing flavors, adding more spices, baking bolder, and taking things to the next level.
What do you think is the baked good to bring to the office?
I’ve never really worked in an office! But I’m a sucker for a really rich, gooey, fudgy brownie. I think you would win some friends over with that.
You’re based in Minneapolis. Any classic Midwestern dishes that you’re particularly fond of?
They make Nordic Ware here! So Bundt cake. I think of the Bundt cake as being very sort of Minnesotan.
What’s a dessert you’ll never make again?
Wedding cakes in general. I love making them. It’s sort of all the things I love about baking: the flavors, the creativity, the detail-oriented stuff, the beauty of it. But the pressure of making a wedding cake for the most spectacular day of somebody’s life can get insane. And it’s not just the making of it — it’s the delivery that can put you over the edge.
Do you ever have recipe fails? How do you deal?
Over the weekend I set out to make this traditional French cheesecake that has this beautiful black crust and is domed up into this perfect round ball. Mine, though, sunk into this bowl situation, so I filled it with strawberries and rhubarb and called it something else. It was absolutely delicious, but it wasn’t what I had set out to make.
You have to roll with it.
What do you do with all the leftovers you can’t eat?
We have two giant teenaged (almost 20s) sons, so they can polish off quite a bit. My best friend lives across the street and she has three giant sons as well. Between the two households we can get rid of a lot. Some of my neighbors see me coming and they are like “No!!!”
Has Instagram changed the kind of baker you are?
When Jeff Hertzberg and I wrote our first cookbook, there were only eight pictures in it. I’m a very visual learner, so we started a website almost instantly so that we could add pictures to it. The addition of Instagram has taken that even further. I’m a teacher and I have this platform where I can do tutorials and show people how to break down something that looks pretty elaborate. It’s like putting one foot in front of the other and at the end of the journey, there’s a cake.
What’s next?
I have another book coming out! This one is not about bread. I’m planning to write the first of a pastry series, which won’t come out for a while, but it’s still exciting.