Monkey see, monkey dough, as participants of an upcoming fundraiser will discover. During the virtual workshop, those who sign up will get to bake their own batch of monkey bread.
Led by Recipes Bakery founder Meichelle Arntz, Baking for Angels takes place on a Sunday afternoon (May 16, from 3 to 4:30 p.m.) and pre-registrants will receive a package of nonperishable ingredients, a bundt cake pan, and other materials needed to bake along with Arntz from the comfort of their own homes.
One of the reasons Arntz chose monkey bread as the workshop’s objective is it was one of her favorite things to bake growing up, despite the trickiness, she explained. The challenge of baking this soft, sticky pastry is also its appeal.
“Cookies are fun, and decorating them can be fun, but they’re not very difficult to do. But yeast breads, and yeast-kinda things, are harder,” Arntz said. “I learned to make it as a little girl with my mom, she’s the one who taught me. It’s difficult, but it’s also a really fun thing for the family to do.
“That’s why we thought monkey bread would be great. It’s got that nice balance, it’ll hopefully let people learn something they don’t always get to cook at home,” she continued. “Plus I just love the name, monkey bread.”
Proceeds raised from tickets to the baking class will benefit Angels Foster Care, a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit foster family agency, also founded by Arntz.
Before launching the agency in 2006, Arntz was volunteering with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA). While learning firsthand about the challenges faced in providing foster care to children throughout the Central Coast, one case about a pair of brothers left Arntz feeling compelled to make a change in the community.
“I was assigned these two little guys, one was 1 year old and the other one was about 4, and they got moved seven times in 12 months,” Arntz said. “I was horrified.”
As the focus of Angels Foster Care is to provide foster children (from birth to age 5) with one unchanging home for the entire duration of their foster care, parent applicants are thoroughly screened and allowed only one foster child or sibling set per home at a time. Since its inception, the agency has placed nearly 300 infants and toddlers in stable foster homes throughout Santa Barbara County and southern San Luis Obispo County.
The upcoming Baking for Angels class was specifically created to support the agency’s Lionheart Legacy Fund, which helps provide intensive medical, educational, and behavioral services for Angels Foster Care children.
The agency’s main office is located in downtown Santa Barbara, also home to Arntz and the popular bakery and cafe she later founded in 2012.
A lover of baking since childhood, Arntz was inspired by the family recipes handed down to her from her mother, which were handed down to her from her grandmother; hence the name Recipes Bakery.
Before March of last year, Arntz would occasionally hold in-person workshops for families, couples, and individuals at the bakery, but Baking for Angels will be the first virtual class she’s ever hosted.
But she’s not going in fully unprepared, she explained.
“We’ve done stuff with our family where we get together and cook virtually. So there’s been a little bit of practice with that,” Arntz said.
A team from Angels Foster Care will handle the livestream side of things, leaving Arntz with just the fun stuff, she added.
“We’ve got a great team so all I have to do is just go in and have fun and talk to our audience and have them interact,” Arntz said. “This is the first time we’ve done an event of this magnitude, you know, with possibly 90 or so people watching.”
Tickets to the virtual workshop are still available, but early registration is recommended in order to receive the supplies package in a timely manner. General admission to the class is $50, which includes materials, but for $150 more, participants can receive an additional package of goodies, including a designer apron, a bottle of wine, and a copy of Baking with Kim-Joy: Cute and Creative Bakes to Make You Smile.
As for an eventual return to in-person workshops at Recipes Bakery, Arntz said she would be excited to have prospective students back in her kitchen again someday.
“I hope we get to do that again really soon because it’s a blast,” said Arntz, whose cottage-esque bakery was renovated from a 100-year-old house on Santa Barbara Street.
Although the house was nearly falling apart by the time she purchased the building about a decade ago, Arntz said the renovation costs were worth her while and she feels fortunate to own the space rather than having to rent a location, especially during the pandemic.
“I honestly don’t know that we would have made it [during the shutdowns], if we would have been in a rented space, because we own the building and have this buffer of being in control of our costs, so we have been really grateful about that,” Arntz said. “I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to make it through and come out on the other side.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood is breaking on through (to the other side) at [email protected].
