Known as “the kosher baker,” Paula Shoyer started baking at the age of five with her Easy Bake oven. At the time, she had no idea it was even possible to make baking her career.

“Growing up in the late 70s early 80s [it felt] like you were expected to pick one of five career paths; nobody was asking you what you love to do,” Shoyer, author of “The Healthy Jewish Kitchen,” “The Holiday Kosher Baker” and “The Kosher Baker,” among others, told the Journal. “I baked in high school [and] all through college, but it never crossed my mind that that was a career. “

Shoyer went to law school and had been practicing law for about six years, when her husband’s work brought them to Geneva, Switzerland, where she had a legal job for two years. After Shoyer’s daughter was born, she decided to go to cooking school in Paris for fun. It evolved into an amazing career.

“I took all of those dairy pastry desserts, converted them into parve or dairy-free desserts, so that I could eat them with my shabbat meat meals,” Shoyer said. “People started asking me to cater for them, and I started teaching cooking classes in my apartment in Geneva.”

After returning to the United States, Shoyer edited cookbooks for others, and then started writing her own.

“I’m so happy in my kitchen, testing recipes over and over again, trying new combinations and hoping to avoid the bake and dump where something is a complete fail,” she said. “That’s my happy place.”

When asked what people get wrong with baking, Shoyer said most often they use the wrong sized eggs.

“Recipes for baking are calibrated for large eggs,” she said. People tend to use extra large and jumbo eggs.

The other problem: people don’t measure properly. For instance they’ll measure flour in a liquid measuring cup and vice versa. Doing so is messy and inaccurate.

“A measuring cup for solid ingredients is your typical cup with a handle; the reason you’re using it for solids is that you can scoop it up and then level it,” she said. “If you have a Pyrex one-cup measuring cup, and you want to measure flour, you see where the one cup line is, but you can’t get that level.”

Then, when you measure a liquid in a dry measuring cup, and you fill it all the way to the top, it’s going to spill by the time you get to your bowl. You actually put in less than the recipe says.

“It’s not like cooking where you just throw another something in the soup,” Shoyer said. “It’s science; if you’re going to vary certain things, then it’s just not going to come out as intended.”

The oven may also prevent your baked goods from coming out perfectly.

“The level of heat [in every oven] is very different,” she said. “To account for that, whenever you make a recipe … for the first time, you’re going to reduce the baking time.”

If the recipe says bake a cake for an hour, do it for 50 minutes. If it says to bake cookies for 16 minutes, test them after 12 or 13 minutes. After the first batch of anything, you get to know the oven a little bit better and have a better result.

“You can always add time, but it’s hard to take it off,” she said. “Trust that, when you look at the challah, if it’s too light, it’s not done; if it’s too dark, get them out of there.”

And, when you make a new cookie recipe, start by baking three cookies in the oven, according to the directions but with a slight reduction of the time. Then, you can adjust the timing, if necessary, for the rest of the batch!

And to fix mistakes post-baking?

– If your chocolate chip cookies are burnt on the edges, take a vegetable peeler and scrape around, rather than using a knife). That way you keep the shape of the round cookie and nobody knows that you fixed it.

– If the lattice on your pie is broken – it came out of the oven not as pretty as you hoped – it’s no longer a pie! Take a serving spoon, scoop it out of the pan, put it on a plate with some fresh berries on it. It is now a cobbler.

– If your pie crust has a few broken pieces, add dabs of apricot jam and to help you “glue” things back together.

One of Shoyer’s favorite treats is babka bites. The recipe is below.

“Chocolate babka is just magical: [it’s] bread and chocolate,” she said. “Imagine like a little mini-cinnamon bun, but with chocolate swirls.”

What could be better!

Learn more at  www.thekosherbaker.com and follow Paula Shoyer on Instagram @kosherbaker and TikTok @chefpaulashoyer. Feel free to send a message to Paula, so she can answer your baking questions.

For the full conversation, listen to the podcast:

Watch the interview:

Babka Bites

Makes 46- 48 bites

Dough

¼ cup warm water

½ ounce (2 envelopes) dry yeast

¼ cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar, divided

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

dash salt

4 tablespoons margarine, at room temperature for 15 minutes

¼ cup canola oil

1 large egg plus one white

Filling

½ cup (1 stick) margarine, at room temperature for 30 minutes

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa

¾ cup sugar

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Place warm water, yeast and 1 teaspoon of the sugar into a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer and let it sit for 10 minutes, until the mixture bubbles and thickens. Add the ¼ cup sugar, flour, salt, margarine, oil, egg and egg white. Combine with a wooden spoon or a dough hook in a stand mixer until all the ingredients are mixed in. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise 1 ½ hours.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Place the margarine into a medium or large bowl and beat until creamy. Add the cocoa and sugar and beat until combined. Cover with plastic and let sit at room temperature while the dough is rising.

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Place mini muffin papers into a 12- cup mini muffin pan. You will need to bake in batches.

Divide dough in half. On a large piece of parchment paper or other surface sprinkled with a little flour, roll each piece of dough into a 9 X 12 rectangle so that the 12-inch side is facing you. Sprinkle a little flour on the rolling pin if the dough starts to stick to it. Use a silicone spatula to spread ½ of the chocolate filling all the way to the edges. Sprinkle ½ of the chocolate chips all over the chocolate filling and roll up tightly the long way. Cut into ½-inch slices and place one into each of the muffin cups, cut side up. You will have about 24 slices.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly golden.Repeat for the other dough. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store covered at room temperature for up to four days or freeze for up to three months.

Reprinted with permission from “The Holiday Kosher Baker” © 2013 by Paula Shoyer, Sterling Epicure. Photography by Michael Bennett Kress.

Debra Eckerling is a writer for the Jewish Journal and the host of “Taste Buds with Deb.” Subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. Email Debra: tastebuds@jewishjournal.com.