Wedding Cakes and Finding Joy in the Kitchen with Freelance Baker Mackenzie Innis

This week on Not From Concentrate, Catherine Smart talks with freelance baker Mackenzie Innis about the artistry, logistics, and emotional weight behind her beautiful seasonal cakes. Mackenzie shares how she moved from fine dining pastry kitchens to building Ceres, a freelance baking business rooted in local ingredients, florals, seasonality, and deeply personal celebrations. She talks about translating clients’ food memories into wedding cakes, sourcing from New England farms, growing flowers in Somerville, and finding inspiration in bakeries, gardens, mythology, and community. Catherine and Mackenzie also get into the less-glamorous but essential parts of creative solopreneurship: email, bookkeeping, client communication, systems, structure, and managing a busy brain while running a business. For listeners interested in ADHD creativity, this conversation is about what it really takes to turn beauty, skill, and intuition into a sustainable creative practice. And because Not From Concentrate is a food podcast for busy brains, they also talk about ADHD cooking, calming kitchen chaos, slowing down, edible flowers, Boston-area bakeries, wedding cake etiquette, and why cake can still matter in complicated times. Not From Concentrate is a food podcast for busy brains from host Catherine Smart — a cook, writer, mom, and creative entrepreneur with ADHD. Tune in for conversations with chefs, authors, creators, and food lovers about sparking creativity, calming chaos, and finding joy in (and out) of the kitchen + subscribe to the Not From Concentrate newsletter on Substack