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“The Great American Baking Show” contestant and Bay Area baker Parwana Ashari will bring some of her favorite goodies to a pop-up at Pacifica’s Craftsman Coffee on Sunday, June 22.
Though she was still deciding on the menu at the time of this interview, she’ll likely showcase some of her best recipes, including her crowd-pleasing pistachio financiers with cardamom pistachio whipped ganache, eye-catching tartlets and Earl Grey shortbread sandwiched with ganache.
“I was never really into cookies or shortbread before I started making these, and they definitely changed my mind,” she said of the tea-infused treats.
Though she’s now based in San Francisco, Ashari and her family lived in Pacifica during the pandemic and have fond ties to the coffee shop and community hub. Back then, Craftsman was a mobile operation, and venturing out to get coffee from the truck and chat with the owners was a bright spot for the family in an isolating time.
“They gave us a really nice sense of community,” Ashari said of the business, which now has a brick-and-mortar home at 1750 Francisco Blvd.
The pandemic is also when Ashari developed her self-taught baking skills, as a sleep-deprived new mom. While “everyone else got into the sourdough craze, I got into making cakes and cupcakes because that’s what I love to eat,” she said (although she did eventually get into baking bread as well).
As the years went on, she fell in love with patisserie, branching out into more complex recipes. She said she particularly enjoys incorporating her heritage into her baking.
“I have an Afghan background. I try to infuse some of my cultural heritage in the things that I bake, usually through flavor, to help open up people’s palates to my culture a little bit,” she said, naming pistachio, almonds, rosewater, cardamom and saffron among her favored ingredients.
Ashari has long been a fan of “The Great British Baking Show,” in which amateur bakers compete in baking challenges in a picturesque tent in the British countryside. She used to dream of appearing on the show, never imagining it would actually happen.
But when she got into baking, she began posting photos of some of her creations on Instagram, and casting directors for the American spinoff of the show reached out and invited her to apply. It took two years, but she made it on to the third season (Season 3 of “The Great American Baking Show” is now streaming for free on The Roku Channel.)
“When I got the call I was like, ‘Are you sure you have the right person?'” she recalled with a laugh. She said the experience was just as delightful as it appears on television.
“It really felt like I was part of the tent family and tent experience,” she said.
This year, Ashari had to eliminate dairy and gluten from her diet due to health reasons and has been experimenting with dairy- and gluten-free baking in addition to baking with gluten and dairy for others. While she said it’s been difficult not being able to eat many of her old favorites, she’s happy to have recently had successes in adapting her baking to accommodate her dietary restrictions, including an almond, pistachio, orange and cardamom cake she shared on Instagram.
“I feel like I have so much left to learn,” she said.
Ashari sometimes thinks about opening her own bakery someday, but between balancing her family responsibilities and her career at Genentech, she plans to keep baking as a hobby for the moment, with occasional special events such as the one at Craftsman (she also recently collaborated on a dessert course with Nour SF.)
“Right now, it’s fun to do some pop-ups,” she said.
June 22, 1:30-4 p.m., Craftsman Coffee, 1750 Francisco Blvd., Pacifica; Instagram: @paripatisserie and @craftsman_coffee.
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