Pastry chef Jossie Lukacik is teaching her first public baking class at Sweet Spot Studio today, Sept. 18. Jossie became well-known in food circles as the opening pastry chef at Heirloom Restaurant, then for her elegant spins on classic desserts at The Asbury. (Her name at the time was Jossie Perlmutter; she married her husband Tim just over a year ago).

She launched her boutique cake company, Sweet Affairs, in 2015, selling custom wedding cakes, birthday cakes, cookies, and just about any other baked sweets. She expanded her business into a commissary kitchen (a shared kitchen) for bakers, and with Sweet Spot Studio, she expands once again. In July, she was given the opportunity to lease a second space in the Monroe Road complex Sweet Affairs is based out of, and decided to launch Sweet Spot.

“Teaching was always the direction I knew I wanted to go with my career in general,” Jossie says. “I’ve had a lot of people ask me about classes, and I started teaching them in my other kitchen, but it just got so busy in there that I couldn’t do them in there anymore.”

She and Tim did much of the work on the bright white space with touches of Tiffany blue and gleaming stainless steel. The classes are BYOB with two bakers sharing a table and stand mixer, though everyone gets to take home their own creations.

The media preview took place last week, and we made naked cakes with a chocolate ganache drip. The class was well-paced, never dragging, but with enough instruction to know what to do. My friend Lindsay came as my date, and we picked up several tips, like to never decorate a fresh cake; it should sit in the fridge overnight before you try to frost it. We each went home with an (almost) professional-looking cake.

The classes will range in price from $40 for cookie decorating to $75 for cake decorating, and they’ve already sold out through September. If you’re struggling to plan ahead, no worries—once this wedding season is over in November, Jossie plans on taking fewer wedding cakes in order to spend more time hosting classes.

Also in the plans are kids classes and classes for industry professionals, one for bakers looking to up their decorating skills, and another for line cooks at restaurants without a pastry chef.

Cake classes will have a dozen students; cookie decorating can fit 18. Both are kept small so that Jossie can give personal attention to everyone, and ensure that their resulting creations are picture-perfect for the Instagram station set up at the front entrance. Guest chefs will also lead classes, including Sam Allen of Wentworth & Fenn, who will host a macaron class. This is a highly recommend from us, too—I just ordered macarons from Sam for Jon’s birthday, and they were crunchy and airy and delicious (see them on Instagram).

We had a blast at the cake class, and I’m looking forward to checking out cookie decorating. I recently interviewed Jossie as she made unicorn cookies, and my holiday cut-out cookies suddenly seemed so sad. Not this year.

See the full schedule here.

 

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