KARLEE FLORES

… cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy, add in the room temperature eggs one at a time, sift the dry ingredients…

For us bakers, that opening line is our “call me Ishmael” or “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”. They’re the beautifully repetitive and famous opening lines to something great. The cadence of a recipe, the oil splatters on recipe cards and the dog-eared pages of a well-worn cookbook.

We know, despite it all, that we can roll up our sleeves, preheat the oven and make something as easy as olive oil chocolate chip cookies. And on weekends after a particularly hard week, we can laminate some enriched dough and take our aggression out on croissants. Because, when nothing else is controllable, we can still alternate our dry ingredients in three parts with the wet and make a cake.

My name is Karlee, and I’m a baker. I’ve known I was a baker since I was five and all I wanted for Christmas was an Easy Bake Oven. I knew it when I gulped up the smell of my grandma’s car and it smelled like the cakes and cookies she delivered that day.

Recipe development, food photography, videography and this blog are my full-time job. I do all of these things from my home in Portland Oregon with my husband and my very spoiled cat,
Bruce Wayne. I love make-up, movies, and puzzles. Dusk is my favorite time of the day and nothing beats a comfy bed and fresh flowers in a water pitcher.

My blog, this website, is a love letter to bakers. The ones that know that we don’t bake chocolate cake because we are craving it. We baked it because it’s who we are. We baked it because it’s how we control the controllable.

At Olive and Artisan we provide recipes, crafts, and more to fit a mood. It’s honoring nostalgic recipes like Ambrosia Salad. And truly, it’s just whatever is on my mind and heart lately. We might make everything out of brioche for a while if that’s the kick I’m on. Or, contribute to The Perfect Series by developing The Perfect Scratch Yellow Cake. This place weaves in and out of website and a personal blog in the blink of an eye. We can be both. I believe that.

So, let’s solve our problems by folding in some whipped egg whites, yes? Join my newsletter, follow me on Instagram (KarleeSislerFlores) and we’ll do this thing together. Get your Mise en place, we’re about to bake our problems away.