Venessa Waugh makes it from scratch

Love reigns supreme in Venessa Waugh’s heart.

This Valentine’s Day, though, it will not be love of the romantic kind sustaining the pastry chef who runs her three-year-old start-up, Pastry Cravingz by V.

“I am loving my kids,” declared Waugh of her son Ali, 10, and daughter Amira, 5.

She is relishing motherhood and professional ambitions. “They are my main focus in 2026, alongside my business,” she added, a confident smile emerging as she ruminated on a future brimming with promise.

Waugh invited Food to her former pastry school on Tucker Avenue in St Andrew – with Ali, a Jessie Ripoll Primary School fourth-grader in tow – for an afternoon convo on the evolution of the sweet treats biz she founded during the pandemic. She has fastidiously prepped to showcase designer confections whipped up in celebration of the season of love.

Here, in the kitchen space, where her mentor and teacher, Denise Cargill, gave instructions on pastry craft, Waugh revealed a trio of sweet V-day treats.

First up: a two-tiered, butter-cream, vanilla and chocolate heart-shaped cake piped with maroon frosting, and wrapped in a cheetah-print fondant.

She then cracks open a Bento box of a crimson icing, vanilla-flavoured mini-tower cake topped with a crown. It’s encircled by cupcakes with square-shaped toppers with visual depictions of stick-figures in varying stages of courtship and love.

Thirdly, there’s Baileys red velvet blondie that she explains “is a crossover between a cake and brownies, covered in cream cheese and topped with caramel with Hershey’s chocolate drizzled on top”.

“I started doing my own pastries years ago after Sunday dinner for my partner at the time just to have dessert, and then by fooling around I fell in love with it,” Waugh shared with Food of how her culinary journey began, initially with store-bought Betty Crocker cake mixes.

During the pandemic, while furloughed from her Stewart’s Automotive service advisor day job at the time, Waugh – who participated in the 2023 United States Embassy Academy for Women Entrepreneurs workshop – developed a growing interest in watching videos on social media of pastry making.

Newfound baking projects got under way.

Returning to her post at Stewart’s, on the side, she tiptoed into enterprising waters and started selling homemade pastries to co-workers and customers. “They loved it and influenced me to keep at it,” she reflected.

“Persons around me realised I was falling in love with baking and recognised I had a talent,” she recalled. “It was my cousin Melissa Fung who recommended me to Denise Cargill. I went and did eight months of courses in basic baking and decorating, advanced cake decorating and general catering. Miss Cargill is the baker that I still most admire.”

Cargill, christened ‘The Cake Doctor’ by her students, recalled Waugh’s time under her tutelage.

“As a student, I found Venessa to be very meticulous, paying very keen attention to detail. She always set very high standards and would make every effort in attaining them,” said the founder of the culinary school opened in 1993. “She was always very neat in her work and would only be content when the products were perfect.”

Post-culinary school, Waugh hopes to someday open a brick-and-mortar pastry shop in Kingston. The 33-year-old takes heart in how the business has matured. “The cakes that I am making now, I can constantly see where improvements are being made, and I have taken on challenges, where even when I thought I couldn’t do it, it works out,” she told Food.

Next in the build-out phase for Pastry Cravingz by V, Waugh shared: “I want to start doing some sculpting. I have so much more to learn because I still consider myself a young baker. I have seen a lot of pastry chefs, and the level that they are at, I really aspire to go there. I am usually a part of the bake art expo, where a lot of bakers come out and do their sculpting and trust me, it’s marvellous. It is my hope to get there one day.”

lifestyle@gleanerjm.com

BAILEYS RED VELVET BLONDIE

INGREDIENTS

BLONDIE

- 240g (2 sticks and 1tbsp) salted butter, melted

- 350g (2 cups) soft light brown sugar

- 1tsp vanilla extract

- 3 medium free-range eggs, room temperature

- 100ml (⅓ cup and 1tbsp) Baileys Original Irish Cream

- 1tbsp red gel food colouring

- 275g (1¾ cups and 2tbsp) plain white flour (all-purpose flour)

- 3tbsp cocoa powder

- ½tsp baking powder

- 300g (1 cup) white chocolate chips

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

- 400g icing sugar (powdered sugar)

- 100g light cream cheese

- 100g salted butter, softened

BAILEYS CHOCOLATE DRIZZLE

- 40g dark chocolate melted

- 3tbsp Baileys Original Irish Cream

- 1tbsp gold sprinkles (optional)

DIRECTIONS

BLONDIE

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2. Grease and line a medium roasting tin.

3. Melt the butter in a large mixing bowl, using 15-second microwave bursts.

4. Add soft brown sugar.

5. Whisk to combine.

6. Add the eggs, Baileys, vanilla and red food colouring.

7. Whisk.

8. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.

9. Mix until smooth — the batter should be quite liquid.

10. Add the white chocolate chips (optional).

11. Fold together.

12. Spoon into a lined baking tray.

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

1. Sift the icing into a small bowl and add the cream cheese and butter.

2. Whisk until you have thick, fluffy icing.

3. Spread all over the top of your blondie slab.

4. Trim the sides off your blondie (eat as a chef's treat), then slice into large, decadent squares in a 3 x 4 pattern.

BAILEYS CHOCOLATE DRIZZLE

1. Melt the dark chocolate in a small bowl.

2. Add the Baileys.

3. Stir to give a thick ganache.

4. Transfer to a piping bag, snip off the very tip of the bag and pipe zigzags of the Baileys ganache over the blondie.

HEART-SHAPED CHOCOLATE CAKE

INGREDIENTS

CAKE

- 2 cups all-purpose flour (240g)

- 2 cups granulated sugar (400g)

- ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (50g)

- 1½ teaspoons baking powder

- 1½ teaspoons baking soda

- ½ teaspoon kosher salt

- 1 cup whole milk (240ml)

- 2 large eggs

- ½ cup vegetable oil (120ml)

- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

- 1 cup boiling water or hot coffee (240ml)

DIRECTIONS

CAKE

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease 2 9-inch round cake pans with butter or baking spray and line the bottom of each pan with parchment paper. Cake strips are recommended for a more even bake.

2. Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.

3. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, oil, and vanilla. Add to the flour mixture and whisk together until it is well combined.

4. Pour in the boiling water or coffee and whisk until well combined. The batter will be runny.

5. Divide the batter between the prepared cake pans.

6. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in the pans on a wire cooling rack for 15 minutes. Carefully invert the cake layers onto the wire rack, remove the parchment paper, and let cool completely

VANILLA BENTO BOX CAKE

INGREDIENTS

CAKE

- 2½ cups all-purpose flour (280g)

- 2¼tsp baking powder

- ¾tsp salt

- 1⅔ cups granulated sugar (333g)

- ¾ cup unsalted butter, room temperature (170g)

- 3 large eggs, room temperature

- 1tbsp vanilla (15ml)

- 1 cup of buttermilk (240ml)

DIRECTIONS

CAKE

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line two 8-inch pans with parchment paper and butter the sides. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl, then whisk together and set aside.

2. Cream the butter in a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment or an electric hand mixer. Add the sugar and beat on high for 3 to 4 minutes, scraping the bowl down as needed. Add the vanilla, then eggs one at a time while mixing on medium speed, then scrape the bowl down and mix in high for a minute.

3. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour in three batches, alternating with the buttermilk. Once combined, remove the whisk attachment and fold in any remaining butter/flour using a spatula. Do not over-mix the batter.

4. Divide batter equally between the two pans, then bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes or until the edges pull away from the pan, and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

5. Allow to cool in the pan for about two minutes, then invert layers onto a cooling rack, remove the paper, and set aside to cool completely.