Hi! My name is Jessie and I’m the baker behind Candied Pomelo. By day, I’m a product designer but in my free time, I bake. People often ask me, how do you find the time to bake? For me, it’s become somewhat of a stress reliever, an oasis from the chaos. I started taking up baking as a hobby in college after a “quarter” life crisis and an incident with some raw chicken (a story for another time) and haven’t stopped trying to tackle the next baking challenge ever since.
My next challenge is finally stepping out of the comfort of creating well tested recipes and into trying my hand at making my own creations. I’m looking forward to many meltdowns and kitchen disasters and hope that you’ll join me on my journey!
What’s Candied Pomelo about?
I love to bake because I love being able to share my creations with family, friends, and even strangers. Similar to many other families out there, my family gatherings were always centered around food. There isn’t a single childhood memory where I don’t associate the joys with the creating and sharing of food. Because of this, I draw much of my inspiration from my childhood, family, and cultures I’ve had the opportunity to embrace and experience.
Over the years, I’ve looked to the likes of Tessa Huff, Dorie Greenspan, and Stella Parks, just to name a few, in teaching me how to bake through their wonderfully written books. What has been missing for me are the flavors from my heritage that aren’t always as readily available in english cookbooks and blogs. Through Candied Pomelo, I’m looking forward to utilizing the skills I’ve learned from these bakers and chefs to experiment with flavors from my heritage and the flavors of my upbringing.
What’s a pomelo?
A pomelo is a citrus fruit! In fact, it’s the largest citrus fruit; imagine a cabbage-sized grapefruit. Why pomelo? When I was a kid, my grandma would score the rind of the pomelo, peel it off in one piece and put it on my head to wear like a hat. I loved it! To this day, when I see pomelos, the first thing I think of are pomelo hats. On top of that, they are delicious! My mom recently taught me that if you let them sit and age until the rind is yellow and wrinkly on the outside, the pomelo will be super sweet on the inside!