Artist Profile: Audrey Leonard on Baking as Translation

On Audrey Leonard’s Instagram page, a dessert rarely begins as just dessert. A recipe might trace itself back to the memory of something eaten years earlier in Germany, a pastry might start with a fruit spotted at a New York farmers’ market, a birthday cake might start with the mood of a month. For Leonard — the baker and content creator behind the @redcurrantbakery handle — baking is a journey of translation, a method of turning memory, season, and instinct into something edible.

The New York-based baker first got seriously into the craft in 2020 after graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut much of the world down. Back at her home in Colorado with unexpected time on her hands, she decided to “take [herself] to pastry school,” ordering textbooks and teaching herself.

“I could be creative with [baking] and do whatever I wanted,” said Leonard in an interview with The Crimson. “I was like, ‘Yes, there are rules, and yes, there’s chemistry to it,’ but at the end of the day, if you’re like, ‘I have this idea,’ why not try it? Why not see what happens? And then you get happy accidents.”

That shift happened through nostalgic memories. Leonard, who is half German, grew up traveling to Germany each summer with her family where she would encounter native pastries that were difficult to find in the United States — and often just as difficult to track down in recipe form. Rather than simply practicing standard bakes, she began trying to recreate the desserts as she remembered them. At the center of her inspiration was her grandmother, “Oma,” from whom Leonard and her sister would get pocket money before heading to the corner bakery each morning to choose a pastry from the case. That ritual helped shape Leonard’s love of baked goods, and the relative restraint of German baking — less sweet than American baking — still carries through her work today. Consistently, her desserts feel rooted in that same balance of rich but not overwhelming, beautiful but not excessive.

Among the pastries Leonard set out to recreate was Sachertorte, an Austrian chocolate cake layered with apricot jam and coated in chocolate glaze. That one, she said, took perhaps the most effort to perfect.

“I went to a cafe when I was working on my book in Germany, one of my favorites, and they had done [the Sachertorte] in this different way with an almond filling along with the apricot and a bit more alcohol in there, and I was like ‘This is really good’,” Leonard said. “That was the recipe that probably took the most effort. I think I did like 10 trials of that cake before I got it right, but I was hellbent on getting it right.”

If Leonard’s first bakes translated memory, her current ones — while still retaining German influences — often translate season. Spring and summer are the easiest times for Leonard to bake because she loves working with fruit, and living in New York offers constant inspiration through the myriad of farmers’ markets and their changing produce. To Leonard, some ingredients simply have their moment and forcing their usage outside of prime time means losing out on the flavor, freshness, and sense of place that make them worth baking with in the first place.

“I won’t bake with strawberries in February, even though it’s Valentine’s Day,” Leonard said. “I’m like, ‘I can’t.’”

Though Leonard does not make as many traditional German bakes now, those early influences still shape her work. By combining her mother’s German heritage with her father’s Texan side, she has created desserts that lean on German formats and restraint while incorporating more American flavors. The result is a hybrid style that feels distinctly her own.

“I think certain things can be way too sweet and just sickly for a lot of American baking, so then if I lean towards German baking formats but with some American flavors, I think [that’s] very fun,” Leonard said. “So doing things like that I love if I have like three ideas at the same time and none of them are quite what I want them to be, sometimes I need to take a step back and then I realize that if I just combine all of them, it’s my dream dessert.”

Beneath the ease of Leonard’s videos sits a thoughtful recipe-development process and a methodical philosophy about what makes a dessert finished and, more importantly, worth sharing. Once she has an idea, she can already “see it perfectly” in her head. Leonard’s first criterion is visual: a dessert should be beautiful and exciting to look at, not because it has “10 pounds of frosting” but because of the way the elements cohere through color, texture, and composition. After that comes structure — brioche should be fluffy, a cookie should be chewy. Then there is the flavor. If she plans to name an ingredient in a dessert, she wants it to actually register on the palate.

“Like poppy seeds,” Leonard said. “Poppy seeds are a big flavor profile in Germany, whereas I feel like in the US, we kind of just sprinkle them in for a little fleck kind of situation. You don’t really taste it.”

Thus, her version of a lemon poppy seed loaf included ground up poppy seeds for a more powerful flavor. For Leonard, then, a successful dessert is one in which appearance, texture, flavor, and internal balance all align with the original idea in her head.

Leonard’s precision, however, never devolves into exclusivity. Part of her unique style is that even as she holds her recipes to high standards, Leonard presents baking as something joyful, flexible, and accessible. That spirit carries into the persona she has gradually built online. Starting with photos and later overhead videos showing only her hands, Leonard slowly grew into the confidence of showing her face and claiming a more public creative identity. Now, with nearly 600,000 loyal followers, she appears in her videos smiling and radiating warmth, offering viewers a steady sunshine rooted in the pleasure that she takes in sharing what she loves.

That warmth extends into Leonard’s recurring projects. Her monthly birthday cake series, which began in January 2025 after followers repeatedly asked what they should bake for birthdays, transforms her instinct for season and mood into something communal: Each cake is guided not only by what ingredients are in season but by what a particular month feels like to her, whether that means something heartier and bolder in March or lighter, pinker, and more delicate in April. In tune with her commitment to baking accessibility, though, these cakes are often more invitation than instruction, allowing her viewers to take her ideas and adapt them however they want to make their celebration feel special.

This sense of community translates over to her breakfast counter gatherings, as well, where Leonard channels her love of breakfast into a more intimate kind of hosting. For her, it also doubles as a testing ground for what might come next for the @redcurrantbakery.

“I would love to have a neighborhood breakfast spot that everyone in the neighborhood goes to,” Leonard said. “You see your neighbors there; you recognize everybody. Everyone’s hanging out and having a good time and the food is good.”

While Leonard might have started baking in the isolation of the pandemic, her work has always been about much more than baking alone. What emerges from @redcurrantbakery is a way of translating taste, memory, feeling, and fun across edible forms and making them shareable. And, as she continues building this world — online and, perhaps one day, around a neighborhood breakfast table — the impression she leaves is of shared delight.

“I just feel like baking is not that serious,” Leonard said. “Like, it’s just a cake!”

— Staff writer Audrey Zhang can be reached at [email protected].