My love and fascination for baking started when my grandmother Hattie would let me help her with making cakes, cookies, pies, and a family favorite, bread pudding. In the beginning, I was too small and too young to operate the stove, so she let me do the safe things like breaking eggs and measuring ingredients. It wasn’t long before I graduated to using the stove and being in the kitchen without supervision. Throughout the years, baking and collecting recipes continued to be my favorite hobbies. At holiday time, I always had
more requests for baked goods than I could handle.

In 1985, I resigned my position with a railway company in Atlanta, Georgia. While I pondered my next employment move, a dear friend, Thelma Ann, urged me to start a baking business. I was very reluctant and not sure that I could bake well enough to earn a living. My friend insisted that I could, and a year or so later, I proved her right. I started a home-based baking business that featured a variety of frosted cakes, cheesecakes, and pound cakes.

Throughout the years, my curiosity and sometimes dissatisfaction led me to try many different things within the food and gift industry. My twenty-plus years in the business have been spent providing specialty desserts and gourmet gifts to restaurants, dessert cafés, delicatessens, hotels, private clubs, colleges, hospitals, commercial real-estate management companies, TV news anchors, and some of the most prestigious corporations at the Atlanta Financial Center.

Owning and operating a home-based baking business has been profitable, fun, exciting, challenging, frustrating, and a tremendous learning experience! All of these experiences have compelled me to write this book, which I hope is the beginning of the next chapter of my career.

Quincella C. Geiger