Who We Are
This is Michelle
Sharper than a kitchen knife, Michelle has made Bleeding Heart Bakery what it is today. She’s passionate about feeding people—and feeding people right.
Michelle first learned to cook when she was sent to a California school for troubled teens. Assigned to kitchen duty whenever she misbehaved, Michelle started misbehaving quite a bit. The kitchen was headed by professional chefs who used fresh, local ingredients in everything they made. Michelle learned first-hand that this was the way to go.
After California, she traveled the U.S. working the kitchens at some the nation’s finest restaurants. Usually, she’d work for free. Sometimes, pay meant a bus ticket and a referral to the next restaurant in the next city.
Michelle’s formal education began when, without telling her, an Atlanta restaurant got her into culinary school. She went on to graduate top-of-class from Chicago’s French Pastry School and, from there, she joined up with the Dutch patisserie team. During her stint in Amsterdam, Michelle found her passion for cakes and her personality in pastry.
Bleeding Heart Bakery is the culmination of Michelle’s skills, vision, and ethics. Since opening shop with Vinny in 2003, she’s been pioneering the kinds of inventive creations that have earned fame for the bakery and continue to inspire her peers in the industry. Oaxacan-spiced cakeballs, chocolate-dipped bacon, absinthe-laced cakes—this is Michelle at work.
