Stella Parks facts for kids

Stella Parks is a famous American pastry chef and food writer. She lives in Kentucky. She used to work in restaurants and wrote for a website called Serious Eats. In 2018, she won a big award, the James Beard Foundation Award, for her amazing cookbook, BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts.

Early Life and Learning

Stella Parks was born in Kentucky. She grew up in a town called Versailles. She started working in restaurants when she was only 14 years old!

After finishing high school, Stella went to a special cooking school. It was called the Culinary Institute of America. She studied baking and pastry there and graduated in 2002.

Working in Restaurants

Stella Parks worked in many different restaurants. These were mostly in the Lexington, Kentucky area. Some places she worked at include Wallace Station and the Holly Hill Inn.

She also spent some time in Tokyo, Japan. She moved there to learn Japanese. It was a time when she wanted to try something new.

In 2010, Stella became the pastry chef at a new restaurant. It was called Table 310 in Lexington. Her work there was so good that in 2012, Food & Wine magazine named her one of America's Best New Pastry Chefs.

Writing and Cookbooks

In 2010, Stella started her own food blog. She called it BraveTart. She worked on it with a photographer friend.

A year later, she began writing a column for a food website. This website was Serious Eats. She wrote for them for a long time. People at the website even called her their "pastry wizard"! Stella was a senior editor there. She wrote for Serious Eats from 2011 to 2019. After that, she became an editor emeritus for the site.

Stella's work mixes baking with history and science. She is known for creating very exact recipes. These recipes often make classic American desserts even better. She sometimes creates "copycat" recipes for childhood favorites.

In 2017, Stella published her first cookbook. It was called BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts. She worked on this book for six years! She did a lot of research into old recipes and tested many new ones. The cookbook celebrates famous American desserts. It also looks at how big food companies changed home baking.

The BraveTart cookbook became a New York Times bestseller. Many people and critics loved it. Saveur magazine called it "the most groundbreaking book on baking in years." Bon Appétit said it was "one of the greatest dessert books of our time." In 2018, Stella's BraveTart cookbook won a James Beard Foundation Award. This award was for the Best Baking and Dessert Book.