A Week's Worth

I wanted to take notes of my last pop up of 2025 for both my own records, and for this newsletter. Just like I break down pop up prep by the day, I’ve formatted this post Monday through Saturday. 2026 will bring massive changes to At Heart operations; the pop up I document here was one of my lasts. There will be another on January 31 with my usual pan dulce menu, then my final pop up—a plated dessert night in collaboration with another local chef—is on Friday, February 13. More details to come.

Monday, December 8:

Mondays are always admin day, so I spend the morning answering emails and sending cake invoices. I realize I still haven’t finalized the pop up menu, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. I need to see what produce looks good, what looks poppin’ before committing to anything final. Where is the quince in this city?

Today I have a lunch date with my friend and pop up baker Vince. We go to the Beksa Lala lunch pop up for polish vegetarian sandwiches. There is what feels to me like a dearth of thoughtful vegetarian food within Atlanta city limits (the exception being La Semilla). So, I was excited to order Beksa’s fried cauliflower sandwich with an side of extremely perfect and tender, very heavy on the dill potatoes and a cup of borscht, my first but hopefully not last time trying.

Vince and I commiserate over pop up struggles. How impossible it feels to responsibly, according to our values, grow an indie business right now. I confess I am weary from having to think up creative ways to get my food to the public. We overhear the owner of Beksa, who is popping up today in what is normally a California-style chicken asado shop, tell people walking in that her vegetarian food is coming out of the kitchen right now, not chicken. When the hungry folks hear this, they turn around and exit the restaurant.

It’s an unusually eventful Monday this week — my Washington Post holiday cookie contribution was published. I developed a masa harina hibiscus cookie that I first made two years ago for the Little Tart Cookie Grab in 2024 and then most recently at my weekly pop ups last year. Payment for that was $400, which arrived late. Lol.

There is a lot of time to just think on Mondays; the day is mostly spent preparing mentally, spiritually for the rest of the week. To cap off this Monday I take an edible with the hopes it will lull me to sleep later. Before bed, I cry about money then soak the beans for tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 9:

Pop up prep begins for real on Tuesday, which is empanada day. I keep a savory item on the menu, always vegetarian. This week I’m adding sweet potato to the beans and cheese filling. To start prep, I set the oven high, 450F for the potatoes, which I peel kinda sloppily, then dice into chunks. A pour of olive oil, some salt, and several cracks of black pepper is all they need before roasting for 30 minutes or so.

I get the beans started right away in a Dutch oven, always the jewel-green Staub I got for Christmas for the beans, which are from Rancho Gordo. The little Santa Maria Pingquito bean is what I use. There’s a little corner store in downtown Decatur called Kelly’s Market where my husband picks up the beans for me. I used to have strong derogatory thoughts about the concept of and literal Rancho Gordo waitlist, but now I’m just happy more people are eating great beans.

Sometimes I like to caramelize the aromatics before adding the beans and water, which I do today. Just a quartered yellow onion and many garlic cloves into the pot with olive oil over high heat. Once caramelized to my liking, I add in a few sprigs of fresh thyme, the beans, more olive oil, then the water. I cover the pot with a lid, slightly ajar, lower the heat to medium-low, and move on to making pastry dough.

My empanada dough is a shortcrust, bound together with an egg, very cold butter, and very cold water. I like this dough because it’s forgiving and doesn’t tear easily when I’m assembling and pleating, which I’ll tackle later in the day. It is a bitterly cold, ordinary day of tending to a pot of beans on the stove, which finish cooking in about three and a half hours. They are creamy and luscious thanks to the olive oil.

I portion and roll out the shortcrust into six inch rounds next, then scoop 30 grams of filling — those luscious beans, grated sharp white cheddar, roast sweet potato — onto a pastry round. Fold one side over the filling quickly and confidently. I don’t understand how, but pleating the dough has always come instinctively. I get through the batch quickly, and thank god as it’s time for dinner. I test-bake one of the empanadas for quality control and eat it happily with a bowl of beans while watching The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. A “guilty pleasure,” I suppose, though that’s another concept I don’t believe in.

Wednesday, December 8 & Thursday, December 9:

I wake up grumpy, plus it’s raining. On my morning walk I listen to some of Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life. I recognize the poem in the epigraph — “Love after Love” by Derek Walcott — a favorite. I try to remember the poem’s message of self-acceptance (“You will love again the stranger who was your self…”) I try to remember a lesson from Adler’s book: That there is something in each day worthy of attention and meaning-giving.

Today is cookie and cake day so I get to work on the doughs first. As always I’m making my masa harina chocolate chunks. These “perform” all over the place at pop ups. There are times when they’re the first thing to sell out; others when I’m giving them away towards the end of the day, just to be rid of them. They remain on the menu because I’m stubborn. Anyway, once people eat the damn cookie they realize it’s so much more than plain chocolate chip thanks to that toasted masa harina.

For the cake, I decided on a spiced masa harina vanilla bean, frosted with lemon olive oil Swiss meringue buttercream. In addition to the pop up this week, I have a custom cake order to fulfill, so I get to work on that too.

My cake philosophy no one asked for is I want my layers to be thinner than traditional thick American layer cake, and basically just a vessel for the filling. Cake fillings are where I bring in the fresh, the tart, the acidic, the garden. I want the filling to be a respite from sweetness. I’m thinking about the bite on the fork and what I want eaters to experience first. A light soak of coconut milk or simple syrup I’ve spiked with hibiscus petals on the cake layers which easily gives way to the fork > then the tart acid from the garden filling > rounded out by the creaminess of the buttercream which I salt fearlessly to balance out the overt sweetness of the meringue. (A dessert pet peeve of mine is when I can tell the baker was afraid of salt.)

It’s Thursday now, and time to finalize the menu. I visit the Dekalb Farmers Market, a huge international grocery store and metro Atlanta institution since 1977. Think of a Costco-like place where you can buy produce and other goods in bulk, but without a membership. I like shopping here for produce I can’t find elsewhere and when I can’t wait around for the weekend markets. I prefer my pastry to be steeped in locality, whatever best highlights the local season, but today I spot big orbs of passion fruit and load up my basket.

Plugra is at a good price here so I stock up. At $4.40/pound it’s the cheapest option which makes my wallet and later, the pan dulce, happy. When I was at the restaurant they were giving me Sysco butter, so that I get to choose the Plugra is a victory and a middle finger. I came here specifically for quince though. Later in the day I have a conversation with another local baker who let me know zero of the fruit farmers she works with grows quince or knows anyone who does. I’m out of quince luck, but no matter. I decide on a pear butter spiked with passion fruit. I get more passion fruit than I need and let them live in the freezer destined for cakes later in the month, that is if I don’t eat them all first.

Friday, December 12:

The day before a pop up is usually a mad dash and this Friday is no different. I make the concha toppings, basically sugar cookies (don’t forget the salt!) — a chocolate cinnamon + yellow corn masa harina to mimic the flavors of champurrado and berry hibiscus. I make the vegan coffee cake that benefits from an overnight chill. I make the Swiss meringue buttercream; I build the half sheet cake, then the custom cake and chill both. I make the concha dough early in the afternoon because it likes a long, cold ferment and I’m here to serve the conchas in whatever way they need. I remember to stretch my legs/arms/core while the mass of bread flour/whole wheat flour/butter/water/eggs/salt mixes round and round the dough hook.

In five years of pop ups I’ve learned to ignore the call of an all-nighter. The solution that isn’t. The idea that at 3pm sounds reasonable, maybe even fun if I let myself indulge in an afternoon coffee. But you have to understand something: once the evening rolls around and the prep list is still at a scary length, that 3pm idea is now very stupid. No matter how much it sucks to get out of bed a mere three hours after climbing in, it is better than pushing my body, my mood to that specific limit.

On this Friday though, the eve of my final pop up of 2025, I have made such great time, I get a whole six hours of sleep.

Saturday, December 13

The alarm goes off at 2AM and instantly I hate the life choices that led to this. I slump out of bed, put on a bra, throw on compression socks with my Danskos, and make a beeline for the concha dough and begin portioning.

This familiar repetition — I must have made thousands and thousands of conchas in five years — puts my body on autopilot. Carve away at the cold dough with a bench scraper, the same one I’ve had all of those five years, and break it down into little rounds. Brush on the egg wash on each individual bun, readying them for their crunchy cookie topping, scored to resemble a seashell. Nearly every time I make conchas I think about how if I had a pop up at the beach, I’d be selling seashells by the seashore.

My home oven fits two half sheet pans, which means at maximum I’m able to bake twelve conchas at a time — the utter indignity of it all! I know better than to play the comparison game but cannot help remembering the restaurant commercial ovens which were large enough for 30 conchas at once. I long for speedy efficiency, but settle for slower and good enough for now.

As the conchas proof I get cookies in the oven, then the empanadas. Cut the sheet cake into 27 slices and decorate each with snapdragon stems and petals and candied lemons. The garden in the cake and the garden atop the cake. With just over four hours before I have to head out, the conchas have proofed and go in the oven, twelve at a time. Finally, it’s time to slice the coffee cake and drizzle the hibiscus glaze and pack everything up for the ten minute drive to Opo Coffee.

Walking into the coffee shop holding cake is the best advertisement—inevitably any curious people will drop by to see what all the fuss is about. I set up the table in the pop up space, what is usually a training lab for classes about espresso and pour overs. The cake slices go front and center because people like to take pictures. I set up the display tray with menu labels and one of each menu offering, then it’s time for breakfast. My husband, also my pop up assistant today, brings me over an iced vanilla latte with oat milk and vegetarian breakfast sandwich. It’s 9:30AM and I’ve already worked a seven hour day.

The line began forming around 9:50 and by 10:30, all that was left was a handful of masa cookies and a few of the champurrado conchas, a pop up record for me. The morning was a whirlwind; neighbors and repeat customers pulled up, as did At Heart newcomers. There is always a chance to educate someone about a concha, the word panadería, my own heritage. A week’s worth of work earned me just under $1K.

Pop ups have sustained me for five years. I’m grateful to the business model that allowed me to float all over this city setting up in temporary spaces, tethered nowhere but to my own convictions. But, I’m over it. What I want is longevity in one space that’s not my house, bigger opportunities, some help carrying the load, an oven capable of baking more than twelve conchas at once, to make a deeper impact.

Just like in 2024 when Trump was re-elected, I want to be out on the streets with the public again. In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit writes about “to the streets” being a call of urban revolution, “…for the streets are where the people become the public and where their power resides.” I want to fuel my own revolution by feeding people with nourishing pastry, made with the best ingredients I can — where my power resides — as we do our part to help birth a brand new world, if only we can dream it and walk toward it. I spend the last weeks of 2025 and first bit of the new year dreaming up and walking fast towards plans to do just that.