FT Weekend Food and Drink is supported by Plymouth Gin.

Hi, FD Weekend listeners.

Welcome to the last episode of our four-part mini-series on Food and Drink.

For each one, I'm approaching a different expert in the food world that's really good at something,

and I'm asking them to teach us about that thing.

Today, we have Natasha Pickowitz on the show. Natasha is a three-time

James Beard Award finalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef, and for years she led pastry at the beloved

Floribar and Alto Paradiso. When the pandemic hit, Natasha lost her job. And so she pivoted into a more free, creative style of baking outside of the system.

It has more of a DIY punk do-it-yourself vibe.

And now she hosts these very successful pop-up bake sales all over New York City,

which have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for causes like

Planned Parenthood.

I invited her on to help make baking and pastry feel less intimidating and more free.

She talked to me from her apartment in Brooklyn, so if you hear a cat, that's her cat.

Okay, let's get into it.

This is FT Weekend, the podcast special edition. I'm Lila

Raptopoulos. Here's Natasha. Natasha, hi, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me.

So you're pastry chef and you are known in New York

for doing these sort of exciting DIY feeling pop-ups and bake sales and they've built this huge loyal audience.

But you come from a fine dining background and I'm curious if you can tell me first what you initially loved about

pastry and baking and how you got into that world. Well, it's so funny that you say that I have a

fine dining background because I really see myself as coming from a DIY background and then I

...