About Milly’s Kitchen Madness & Bakes

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved equally baked goods, the act of baking, and the act of eating baked goods (mine or the world’s). My oldest memories are also my fondest ones and they include my Grandma Betty Jo with her hands in pie crust, or my mom baking her blueberry muffins or sour cream coffee cake, or my dad making biscuits with homemade syrup on a Sunday morning. As such, I’m all about the bakes, all the time—from scheduling road trips around donut shop stops, to a compulsive habit of trying every scone I can get my hands on or lips around, to falling into a trance-like focus and losing two hours of my every day reading recipes.

Aside from hours spent with flour on my face, acquiring oven burns on hard-to-imagine spots on my hands and arms, making those near and dear to me taste all the bakes and often expand their waistlines in the name of “research”, or outfitting a 3-tiered pantry cart on wheels with a minimum of 8 varieties of chocolate chips and backup packages of anything one would/could really need in order to put together a good bake, I have other life experience that has prepared me for this kitchen venture. I grew up in the St. Croix Valley; I have a degree with a double major in ceramics and photography from the University of WI-River Falls; I was a wedding photographer for 10 years; and for 20 years, I was part of what I believe is the best ceramic art center in the country—Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN—where I was the executive director for 8 years. I’m a mother to two teenage boys, almost an empty-nester, and I’m married to Mike Helke, who is an educator and a studio potter (which explains the obsession with plating my bakes on pots!) While I can only boast one professional-sector baking job in the several months between “graduating” from my career in the arts non-profit sector and the global pandemic simultaneously putting my “professional” baking on furlough and inspiring my Kitchen Madness & Bakes, I possess over 15 years of restaurant and food service experience. And, of course, I officially hold a Cottage Food Producer License from the state of Minnesota.

I was no doubt spoiled in the realm of baking and I’m positive that I’ve spoiled my own children with my incessant need to one-up my last year’s birthday bake for them; my planning of the holiday menus several weeks in advance so we’d allow ample brainstorm sessions for the dessert aspect of the meal; the late night or early morning baking I’d do for my work colleagues with portions appropriated for the kids, of course; and, most recently, the now daily scone bake and the weekly dessert making challenges I “compete in” with a good friend.

Heaven forbid if I baked something that didn’t stay fresh the next day or if I over promise a bake to a non-family member, leaving little to no leftovers for my boys. My kids would roll their eyes and sigh, “There’s no dessert in the house,” if there was no cake coming out of the oven or brownies on the counter or a stockpile of pumpkin bars in the fridge. I’ve passed my love of dessert making onto my youngest, now 17, who makes theee best vanilla pudding on the planet; not to mention none of us will make our own whipped cream when he’s around; it’s not worth it because his is always better. My 19-year-old experimented with cheesecakes for a season and I’ve yet to taste a cheesecake that could even touch his. My husband’s bakes are now few and far between, but, really, when would he be able to even access the kitchen or the oven with me stomping around here like I own the place. He’s instead been a loyal taster and motivator and supporter of what is now so much bigger than a ‘habit”. I guess without their overwhelming enthusiasm for my baking, or, on their worst days, mere tolerance, I wouldn’t be able to turn this passion into a tasty little business.  

And, so, Milly’s Kitchen Madness & Bakes was officially born, a way for you to support my habit and taste my bakes, all of which are produced in my home kitchen. Inspired by a CSA model, this CSB—Community Supported Bakes—determines its own weekly menu of bakes and delivers your “Share” to your home or awaits your curbside pickup at my home in Stillwater, Minnesota.

P.S.—Milly is me and is an old nickname, coined in late high school and early college days from my last name, Millfelt. Those who’ve known me the longest still employ that nickname.