Nicole Jaconetti is the kind of woman who finds opportunities and then turns them into success. If opportunity was a baseball, she would hit it out of the park. To keep up with the sports metaphors (and because Nicole is a Flyers fan), if opportunity was a hockey puck, she would score goal after goal.
Growing up in Deptford NJ, Nicole studied Cosmetology at Glouster County Institute of Technology and also attended the Art Institute where she majored in Interior Design. A year and a half ago, Nicole was happily employed as an interior designer. For fun, she would attend rock concerts with her friends. They like the Killers, Rage, and No Doubt. Nicole lists the Beatles, Korn and Godsmack as some of her fav music as well. She read the Twillight series 3 times and also enjoyed taking walks with her 2 beautiful daughters, Annabella, 5 and Alayna 19 months. In her spare time, she liked to dabble in the kitchen, baking cupcakes for her daughter’s school and holiday cookies for friends.
Then the recession hit and like many people, Nicole was laid off. She returned to baking for fun and made a bridal shower cake for one of her sister’s friends. Everyone raved about it and she saw this as an opportunity to pursue a life-long dream of being a professional baker. Annalayna’s Sweets was created. Named after Nicole’s daughters, Annalayna’s Sweets provides baked goods for all occasions.
Instead of picking out curtain fabrics, now Nicole spends her days making birthday cakes and winning cupcake challenges. She can make anything. From molded candy to realistic cakes, Nicole uses her background in art and design to her advantage. Self-taught, Nicole has spent hours practicing each technique. The day before my visit she made an anniversary cake and a Backyardigans birthday cake. I’ve also seen her pizza cake which tastes like cake and buttercream but looks just like a pizza.
She’s especially known for her vanilla pudding cake, her cream cheese pound cake and her chocolate peanut butter cake. Her style is contemporary, fun and flavorful. “I’m not a traditional person and my stuff reflects my funky personality.”
To anyone who knows Nicole, it’s no surprise she ended up as a professional baker. She’s been baking as long as she can remember. Grandmothers, her Mother and Father all baked with her. The first thing she remembers making was “Cookie Monster Dough” which came from a recipe found in a Sesame Street Book.
When she was a young child, her grandfather made her grandmother an enormous cutting board, exactly the size of their kitchen table. It was there that Nicole’s family gathered around, baking together. It was there that she learned to make the hamentaschen recipe she shared with me. Each Spring, her grandmother would make these cookies and Nicole remembers helping out by using a round glass to cut each cookie.
For those of you, who have never tried hamentaschen, imagine a fig newton, except 100 times better. Traditionally, these cookies are served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. According to www.jewfaq.org, the (abbreviated) story is that a beautiful and smart Jewish woman named Esther married the King of Persia while keeping her Jewish heritage a secret. Meanwhile, the King had an advisor named Haman who hated Jews and planned to kill them all. Esther revealed her religion to the King who then saved the Jews and hanged Haman. To celebrate, the Jews ate cookies. (That last part about the cookie eating isn’t verified). Hamentaschen, depending on the source, are known as “Haman’s Pockets,” “Haman’s Hat,” or “Haman’s Ears.”
As a young Jewish child, I remember dressing up like Esther and eating hamentaschen. We always thought of them as “Haman’s Ears,” because my family is morbid and loves a good ear-eating story. Nicole’s hamentaschen taste nothing like ears. They are soft, golden-brown with a thick dough crust outside and a semi-sweet apple-prune-filled center.
As she combined the filling ingredients and then rolled out the dough, Nicole talked about her family and friends. Family is very important to her and she is close with her two younger sisters. A combination of food and family, Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday. She holds it at her house and cooks most of the food for 16-18 people. She believes that no one should be alone on Thanksgiving so she invites everyone. Her philosophy of food stems from her desire to see people content. “I like to make other people happy and food does that,” Nicole said. “When I make snacks for my daughter’s school and they see the cupcakes and cookies, they are so happy.”
Nicole folded up the sides of each hamentaschen and reflected on the concept of herself as an ingredient. She debated between being an avocado or a pizza and decided on pizza because it can be so many different varieties and she’s versatile. Plus, pizza makes everyone happy and she likes to make people happy.
After baking 3-4 trays of cookies, we ran out of filling. Nicole immediately seized on the opportunity and began rummaging through her refrigerator and cabinets for alternative ingredients. As she created other flavor combinations, I knew that just like Esther, Nicole would always manage to turn situations into a success. Sitting at her dining room table, we enjoyed the regular hamentaschen and also versions that included raspberry + cream cheese (plain), chocolate + peanut butter, and raspberry + cream cheese (with orange zest). The last combination proved to be awesome and I’m glad I could be there to participate in the birth of a new Annalayna’s Sweets baked tradition.
Lessons Learned:
-When you run out of regular filling for a recipe, make something up! While the traditional recipe is awesome, it’s also really exciting to try out new flavor combinations.
-Kevin likes hamentaschen. Who knew? Nicole generously packed up some leftovers for me. Kevin thought they were sweet without being too sweet and chewy without being doughy. He ate a lot (but as usual I ate more). I’m so proud of my gentile husband who eats hamentaschen and says, ‘oy.’
-If you get a chance to visit Nicole in her kitchen, bring an ipod with speakers, or your own laptop with a Pandora account. Nicole likes to listen to music when she bakes and the day I was there, she had already listened to so much that Pandora turned off her access for the rest of the month. That’s a lot of music!
-Please note: the photos of the cakes on this page were taken by Nicole. She has lots of them on her Facebook page and I helped myself. If you want to see more photos of her creations, look her up on Facebook.
-Nicole learned that it’s difficult to get me to leave her house. I was so darn happy perched on a stool, watching her bake and talking about food that I spent hours upon hours there. Her husband came home, her kids were ready for bed and yet I remained. She was too nice to kick me out.
Hamentaschen Cookies
Dough Ingredients
Yields 60-80 cookies depending on size and thickness of rolled dough
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup orange juice
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
5-6 cups flour
Directions:
Cream the oil and sugar.
Add eggs and continue mixing until smooth.
Add liquids and flavoring.
Add flour until it turns into a ball.
She does it until she can pick it up and it’s sticky. If it’s too sticky, add more dough. Nicole says if you are using a KitchenAid mixer, it will start to struggle if it’s on low speed. That’s when you know the dough is finished.
Mound up the dough, wrap it in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator overnight.
Filling Ingredients
1 can prune jam (approx 10 oz)
1/3 cup softened, finely chopped raisins (Nicole soaked hers in hot water for 6-7 hours. She uses both dark and light raisins because her mother prefers white ones while her sister prefers the dark).
½ tsp cinnamon (Nicole said this is optional. Her grandmother used it but she doesn’t include it because she doesn’t like the taste of cinnamon).
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbs orange juice
¼ cup sugar (more or less to taste)
1/3 cup chopped nuts
½ apple chopped
To assemble the cookies:
Flour the surface of the counter.
Take a handful of dough and roll it out until it is approx 1/8 inch thick.
Use the opening of a drinking glass to cut 2 1/2 – 3 inch rounds out of the dough.
Use a spatula to remove them from the counter and put them on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Put 1/2 a tsp of filling into the center of each circle.
Fold up the dough from the bottom over the filling and pinch it on the right side, forming the side of the triangle. Do the same thing to the left side. Pinch the top together and you should have a triangle.
Bake at 350 degrees farenheit for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Cool on a cooling rack.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve known Nicole for about four years now. I can tell you that she is so unique and fun. She loves to make people happy, and I am happy to have her as my sister-in-law! She loves my boys and has made two totally awesome cakes for them – one for Luke’s christening and one for their joint birthday party last month. (That was the Backyardigans cake mentioned!
She is very open to ideas and likes to think outside the box. That’s why I always call Nicole for cakes. She likes to do things differently and will use her creative styling to make anything you want. You could tell her to make something traditional and she’ll knock it out of the park. But you could also tell her some of your ideas, and she will tweek them until they are a masterpiece. That’s why we get along so well. She is open, fun, and inspiring. Great job, Nicole!
You look so pretty Nicole and so do your gorgeous cakes! JT wants to know where his Lion cake is! I am so proud of you and consider us at the next cupcake challenge on May23rd!!! Love you!
With a million dollar smile and heart of gold your cakes are priceless. Job well done. There is no cake that begins to compare to an Annalayna Sweets cake. They are beyond belief in design and taste.