Could Joy the Baker be the next Culinary Superstar?

It’s pretty safe to say that when Joy Wilson started her food blog in 2008, she couldn’t possibly envision the culinary heights she’d achieve in the years to come. Even if she did have pie in the sky hopes for her fledgling blog, she had no way of knowing that such modest roots would grow into the empire she continues to build as Joy the Baker.

As someone who is always intrigued by the often-circuitous journey of people like Joy the Baker, I welcomed the opportunity to chat with her. Engaging and seemingly unaffected by her tremendous success, the self-taught, one-woman baking empire was only too happy to share her story.

How does someone go from being an English Literature major to an aspiring blogger?

“While I was putting myself through college, I was working at different bakeries and restaurants. It’s not always glamorous, but I’ve done anything and everything in the restaurant business. So when I graduated with my degree in English Lit, I was still working in restaurants, and I just kept doing that because I needed to keep paying the bills. So I was like, should I go and get a Master’s degree and try to be a teacher? But the thought of spending more money on my education was, I cannot. You already make so little money in restaurants, so spending on a Master’s felt completely unfun.”

When I started my blog in 2008 as I was working in restaurants, I just wanted a way to document the recipes that I was making and learning in restaurants. And because I studied English and liked writing, I wanted to add a little bit of my passion for writing to that space, and it just grew from there.”

Just as interesting as Joy’s career journey is her geographic one. Now firmly entrenched in New Orleans’s culinary landscape, her road there is dotted with more than a few detours. Exactly how did this California girl ultimately wind up in Louisiana?

“I like to move around. That’s the thing about me being a trash-ass Gemini. I like to get moving. So I went to school in Seattle. I’ve lived in Vermont and Miami. And then I was back in Los Angeles, and I had been there for about seven years and loved it. A lot of my family was there, but I needed to go away. I had been visiting New Orleans for several years, several times a year before I decided to move here. Then one day, and this happens to people, I was out in the French Quarter, and there were daiquiris. I saw a For Rent sign on an apartment, and I was like, let’s do it. I’m going to live here. And I did. I moved to Royal Street four months later and have never looked back. I won’t be moving back to Los Angeles anytime soon.

Whenever I ride my bike down Royal Street now, I think about taking that first turn onto it in my little car with my cat next to me and thinking, this is it. New Orleans is a very special place. I think it’s the best city in the country. And it’s wild. It’s wild. I really love to call it home.”

From her adopted hometown of New Orleans, Joy the Baker continues to enjoy the fruits of her labor, catapulting from her blog origins to an ascending brand. And who better to identify that potential than Williams Sonoma. So how does a self-taught food blogger find herself in a partnership with Williams Sonoma?

“We’ve been circling each other for a few years now, trying to work together. I did a demo at the Charleston Food & Wine Festival in early March of 2020, right before everything shut down, and the Williams Sonoma folks were there. We had a little snack together after I did a big demo on the stage that they sponsored, and we were like, should we make cakes now? And we spent the early part of the pandemic developing these cakes and breakfast mixes, and it eventually came together.”

As impressive as building a partnership with Williams Sonoma is, I couldn’t help but wonder whether entering into such a relationship forced Wilson to surrender any of her creative freedom or took away her culinary voice.

“What’s so great about Williams Sonoma is that they want to make a super high quality, high-quality ingredient product. Granted, it’s not the cheapest product on the market, and it’s not the cheapest pancake mix you can buy. But that’s because we were both committed to using the best ingredients and making the process of actually whipping the stuff together at home easy and enjoyable. SO I didn’t have to sacrifice a lot in working with them. They have an incredible team, a test kitchen, and product developers that we worked with.

We went through my site and found some of the most popular recipes and talked about how we could translate those into mixes. I feel super happy with it. In other collaborations I’ve had, the more people that got involved in the creative process, the farther away I’ve felt from the end result, but this one feels really good. It’s authentic, and I don’t have to fake it.”

Calling Wilson “brilliant,” the iconic retailer sells such Joy the Baker mixes as Espresso Chocolate Sheet Cake with Peanut Buttercream Frosting, Carrot Cake Pancakes, and Chocolate Sheet Cake with Neapolitan Frosting, among others.

Not only is Joy the Baker sharing her delicious treats with Williams Sonoma customers, but she’s also been rubbing shoulders with food blog-turned food empire royalty in the form of Ree Drummond for many years, a relationship that had me curious about its origins after seeing photos of Joy visiting the now-famous Drummond Ranch.

“Ree and I were early bloggers together in 2008, 2009, and 2010 and we became friends over the years. This is my third or fourth time at Drummond Ranch. She’s had me out, and my parents have been there. The last time I was there, it was with my parents, and we took the feed truck out with one of the cowboys and fed the cattle. I feel like we’re sort of family a little bit. We even stayed at Ree’s hotel and hung around the ranch a bit. We got to see her son play football. It was just the whole experience. She’s wonderful. She’s a wonderful friend.”

One quality of Joy’s that stood out to me is her willingness to share other cooks’ recipes with her audience. Like many creative types, chefs and cooks can be both insecure and territorial, which not surprisingly results in a reluctance to shine a spotlight on others’ recipes, but not Joy the Baker. Perhaps because she’s self-taught, Wilson not only soaks up external learning but is quick to pay it forward.

“I love to share other people’s food. I love to cook other people’s food. I love to eat other people’s food. I feel like I can learn so much from people. I’m testing a pretzel recipe right now for a class I’m teaching, and I’ve just been kind of going through a bunch of different recipes. I finally landed on one, and it’s not mine. It’s my friend Andrea Slonecker’s. She wrote this amazing pretzel book, and I’ve never found a better pretzel than hers. I think I have so much to learn and enjoy from other cooks.”

As if being an uber-successful blogger, author, teacher, Williams Sonoma partner, and all-around cooking savant wasn’t enough, Wilson even has her own magazine. In the holiday-themed edition recently released, Joy proves that her culinary skill set expands far beyond simply baking by sharing a tempting array of holiday recipes ranging from Thanksgiving dishes to homemade eggnog to even pizza for New Year’s. So stretch those physical muscles and stop by your favorite newsstand to pick up Joy the Baker’s magazine, then swing by Williams Sonoma to grab a few of her mixes before heading home to stretch out those culinary muscles with some of Wilson’s tasty recipes. Your family, friends, and tummy will thank you.