Jennie Brown

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“Being short staffed, I hopped into the kitchen to cover the chef and, ten years later, I'm still there.”
There are probably many kitchen staff who might echo the way in which Jennie Brown got her start. But there is an important caveat when we talk about the career of Ms. Brown: she wasn't a trained chef when she “hopped into the kitchen.” She made it up, as she went along, and she's still doing it.
You might know Jennie Brown as the luminary baker of Goodness Cakes, the girl who brings the internet to a stop when she posts images of her incredible cakes, the girl who delights her customers at the Born Café in Galway, the girl who created Bakefest, the annual West Cost jamboree that brings together the country's best bakers
But here's another caveat: Jennie Brown, the amazing baker, is not a trained baker. She didn't go to culinary school – she studied IT at college, working part-time in restaurants to pay the way. “What are the criteria to be qualified?”, she asks, wisely. She learnt watching her grandmother make brown bread, and her Mum brought her in as a kitchen hand in a local restaurant when she was just 14. Otherwise, it was “great cookery books, Youtube and lots of bad bakes to find the good ones.”
She baked for friends and family, then started selling cakes at a market when she gave up her job. Then it was into her own bakery, and huge public acclaim, and then on to Bakefest, and now on to local Bakefest groups around the country. “My mission in life is to inspire the nation to bake!” she says.
Minister for Baking, now wouldn't that be the job for Ms Brown? And what might be the criteria for that job, you ask? “If it's passion and enthusiasm, I have bags of that,” she says.  Jennie Brown has whatever it takes.

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