Junior Daniel Wu stands in his kitchen, listening to the faint hum of the oven. His math binder rests on the counter, tucked away from shiny metal mixing bowls, a small brown bottle of vanilla extract, and a crinkled bag of flour. 

The oven light is on, a modest orange rectangle. On the other side of the oven’s illuminated window, a flat copper baking tray holds six perfectly spaced cookies. Soon they’ll be ready to be packaged and shipped off to the latest customer.

Lots of U-High students are passionate about cooking or baking. But Daniel is in a small group who take this passion to the next level through social media accounts or small businesses, seeking tangible rewards for their hard work amid a high school environment of constant competition and pressure to succeed.

Daniel has been the owner of his business, Mille Feuille Bakeshop, since summer 2022, before his ninth grade year. He developed his baking skills during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I found a lot of peace doing it. I was able to be really creative and channel my creativity through it,” he said.

Daniel is always looking for new creative ventures. He saw baking not as an opportunity to follow the recipe but to challenge it.

“Sometimes the recipe isn’t always right,” he said. “I feel like that’s another thing — just challenging what you’re given.”

Daniel’s parents were initially opposed to the idea of him owning a small business. This opposition made him even more determined.

“They said, ‘You shouldn’t do that, and I think you should focus on math,’” Daniel said. “And I think again, this is how baking kind of forces you to challenge what you’re told because if I had just listened to my parents, I would have never started it.”

Through baking, Daniel said he learned time management, having to constantly multitask as cookies bake in the oven or cool on the counter.

Senior Elizabeth Grace Sharp began her business, A Piece of Grace, as a sophomore and, similar to Daniel, she has felt her capacity to bake decrease as the intensity of school work increased.

“My first two to three years of high school, I was really into it and I tried to do it as much as possible,” she said. “I think senior year, end of junior year it definitely got to be too much to handle.”

Elizabeth Grace started her business so she could connect two of her passions, advocacy and baking. At the end of high school, she intends to donate all of her profits to the Maria Shelter, a homeless shelter that houses women and children. 

Baking also served as a form of escape for Elizabeth Grace, something she says felt accomplishable and tangible in the face of pressure about school.

“In high school, there are a lot of things you can’t control, right? Or like a lot of times you feel out of control,” she said. “But I think the thing about baking is that I could make something and I could say I have something to show for it.”

Sophomore Sadie Ellis looks at cooking similarly, as an “outlet.” 

Sadie has run a cooking Instagram account, sadie.anne.cooks, since Thanksgiving 2023 when she spatchcocked a turkey —  a difficult method that involves cutting open, pressing flat and cooking the bird.  Since then she has made frequent posts, developing connections throughout the school as people interact with her Instagram.

Sadie loves that her cooking skill allows her to make dishes independently. Like Daniel, she improves on recipes, tinkering with the instructions because of her experience.

As Sadie describes cooking: “It starts as a craving and leads to creativity.”