Molly Baz Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe magazine.
Today's guest is food world superstar Molly Baz. Lots of you know and love Molly. We're just announcing this today, but Molly is one of the keynote speakers at our Jubilee conference happening later this month in Los Angeles. More on that in just a minute. Molly has become quite the entrepreneur since leaving Bon Appétit in 2020. She's launched her own wine company called Drink This Wine, and she's launched Ayoh, the mayonnaise and sando sauce brand. Earlier this year, she opened a vegan fast food joint in Portland, Oregon called Face Plant. Get it? She's written two best-selling cookbooks and is working on her third, and she's become a voice for nursing moms and pregnant moms thanks to her Special K cereal box, Molly is pregnant on the box, and her Times Square billboards, one of which got taken down because some weirdo complained. That billboard should not have been controversial. People need to get over women nursing. If it bothers you, you are the problem, not the nursing mother. Molly and I cover all of that, and we also discuss how she's doing following the Altadena fires this past January. A lot of you know this, but Molly and her husband were two of the many folks who tragically lost their homes. My heart goes out to everyone still dealing with the aftermath of the fires. Stay tuned for my chat with Molly Baz.
Today's show is presented by Square. Some of you might not know this, but years ago I owned a cute little coffee shop in Brooklyn. I sold it because I couldn't do Cherry Bombe and the coffee shop at the same time, but I learned so much about running a small business and having a brick and mortar location. One of my favorite tools was our Square POS. We did everything from there, ring in sales, keep an eye on inventory, and track the discounts we offered every time customers brought in their reusable coffee cups. I appreciated how easy it was to use for me and the team. Training was a snap, because the interface was so clean and well-designed. Today, Square, the point-of-sale technology that helps you manage everything from payments to staff, customers, insights, and lots more, has the backs of more than seven million businesses. The team at Square knows how hard you're hustling to keep your businesses alive and thriving, and that you're looking for ways to save time and be more efficient. Just in time for summer dining, Square has a new lightweight POS device that literally fits in your pocket. Called Square Handheld, it lets you take table-side orders, process payments, and manage inventory. I would have loved to have had that back in the day. When your restaurant is on your mind, which is probably all the time if you're like I was, think big and stress less with Square. Go to square.com/big to see how Square can help you. That link is in our show notes.
Okay, let's talk about Jubilee. We are finally bringing Jubilee to Los Angeles. I have wanted to do this for so many years. It's taking place Sunday, September 28th, at Hudson Loft, and we have an inspiring lineup of speakers and special breakout sessions. We're doing those for the very first time, and of course, great food and drink. As mentioned, Molly is one of our keynote speakers, and we're also thrilled to welcome Melissa King, Courtney Storer of “The Bear,” Bricia Lopez, Suzanne Goin, and lots of other incredible folks. We'll be announcing all the talent in the days ahead. Tickets are sold out, but you can join the waiting list. Visit cherrybombe.com for more, or go to the link in our show notes. Special thanks to our amazing sponsors, Square, S.Pellegrino, California Prunes, Enterprise, Ghirardelli, and Zacapa. Goop Kitchen is doing the lunch for everybody. I love Goop Kitchen, and Now Serving is our on-site bookstore partner. It's going to be a beautiful day. I can't wait for Jubilee Los Angeles.
Now, let's check in with Molly Baz. Molly Baz, welcome back to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Molly Baz:
Thank you, Kerry. Good to see you.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, it's always so good to see your face. I had to look this up, but the last time we talked was Thanksgiving 2024. A lot has happened in less than a year. When I was working on these questions, I was like, "Where do we even begin?" I thought we'd begin with summer, a fun place to start.
Molly Baz:
Okay. This summer. That feels good. That feels light touch enough for me right now. We can move backwards in time as we ease into it.
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly, so summer 2025, how's it going?
Molly Baz:
It is going, on the whole, really great, I would say. I don't feel particularly summery in my spirit right now, which is something that I'm grappling with. I'm such a summer girl, as I think you probably know and can tell. I live in L.A. because I'm addicted to summer and it's kind of always summer here, and I feel a little bit out of touch with the summer girl in me. However, I am going to the East Coast to visit family next week. We're going to the beach. I think we're going to sort that out, me, myself, and I, so stay tuned.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, that's good, so that's your vacation. Going to see the fam?
Molly Baz:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You have the nicest family. How's everybody doing?
Molly Baz:
Everybody's good. We're just sort of re-acclimating to a new work-world life balance, I would say. You came to my house, my former home, which was my workspace, and we had to sort of figure out, what does that look like in a new place? Now, we also have a baby now and our careers are kind of changing and our teams are growing, and so there's an occupancy limit within the home that we're figuring out, but everybody is spiritually pretty good.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll definitely talk about this, but people might not realize the extent to which your home really was work life. I mean, everything that you cooked, everything you did, it was right there in that kitchen.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, it's maybe not going to last forever, but it's something that's been so special in building my career post working in magazines and post Bon Appétit days, where on the one side working for yourself and at home means just there's less creative brilliance around you at all times, and you have to really source it from within. On the other hand, it's really nice to be at home all day, especially when I have a baby, and being able to pop into his playroom and give him one million kisses in 15 minutes and then pop out for something else is so special. Also, what I do is all about home cooking, so it's very natural that I do my job in a home kitchen, and that was one of the challenges at Bon Appétit that I had to kind of grapple with, was we had a state-of-the-art test kitchen with every pot, pan, cutting board, anything in the world at our fingertips, and enormous islands, and in a lot of ways that does not simulate a home kitchen and the constraints that a home cook faces every day when they step into their own kitchen to cook.
I've actually developed every single one of the recipes in every one of my cookbooks from my home kitchen for that exact reason, because I need to be a real home cook when I'm developing these recipes and not be under some false pretense about how many dishes is too many dishes to be piling up in a sink.
Kerry Diamond:
It's so funny, Molly, I literally never thought about that. I mean, I don't know how many of your videos, and Claire and the whole gang, that I watched over the years, and I never stopped to think, "Wow, they're developing recipes for home chefs to then follow, but they're more kitted out than half the restaurants in this country."
Molly Baz:
Oh, I thought about it all the time. I think it is what made my first book the book that it was, that I specifically did not develop it in a professional kitchen. It changed the way I cook entirely, because I was forced to face the pile of dishes, first and foremost. Nobody wants to do them, and when you're looking at your own sink and the way it's piling up, that is when you start making choices that really benefit the home cook. I feel like my first book was really sort of guided by those constraints and that sort of discomfort that there can be in a home kitchen when you're cooking up a storm.
Kerry Diamond:
It's so funny. I am a dish disaster. I don't know what it is about me. My dishwasher is even broken right now, so I'm washing everything by hand. I will use every dish in the kitchen and I'm only cooking for myself. I don't know what it is about me. How can I reform myself?
Molly Baz:
Reading through a recipe first is the first thing I would say. Really situate yourself in the tasks that you have ahead, because that will help inform what you are reaching for as you go. If you know what is coming down the pipeline and you have your head wrapped around what a recipe is going to ask you to do, you'll reach for the appropriate thing for the job, but if you're kind of flying by the seat of your pants and flailing around and don't have that runway of foresight, everything feels helter-skelter and you'll end up grabbing things that aren't exactly the right tool for the job and make the tool harder. I really believe in downloading a recipe before you jump into it.
Kerry Diamond:
You know what I think my problem is? I get too cheffy. Do I really need to take the chocolate bar and the microplane and grate that over my ...
Molly Baz:
Oh my god, never.
Kerry Diamond:
Cherries and yogurt, or whatever I'm eating. I think I do too many of those last little cheffy things, and that's part of the problem.
Molly Baz:
Yeah. You know what I think? A drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkle of flaky salt. That's all you need to finish anything, and that's actually as cheffy as it gets.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guest. Today's episode of Radio Cherry Bombe is presented by Kate's Ice Cream in Portland, Oregon. Kate's Ice Cream was created by entrepreneur Kate Williams. Her younger sister couldn't eat dairy, but Kate firmly believed everybody should have the opportunity to enjoy ice cream, so she set about creating an ice cream brand where everything is 100% plant-based and gluten-free, all the ice cream flavors, the waffle cones, and all the toppings. The first Kate's Scoop Shop opened in Portland, Oregon in 2022. Today, Kate has two locations across the city and tons of loyal fans in Portland and beyond, including myself. I stopped by Kate's this summer and was very happy to get a scoop of my favorite flavor, Cookie Monster. Yes, that's my favorite, in a sugar cone. Cookie Monster is a cake batter flavored ice cream studded with chocolate chip cookie dough chunks and homemade Oreos, and of course, it is blue, but the color is natural and comes from spirulina. That's just one of the many flavors Kate is known for. There's also Marionberry Cobbler, Ube, and Salted Peanut Butter Brittle. You can find all the flavors including seasonal selections at katesicecream.com. Kate also shares all the ingredients so you know exactly what's in your ice cream. In addition to ice cream cones, Kate offers ice cream cakes, ice cream sandwiches, and pre-packed pints, and twice a year, Kate offers her take on the Choco Taco. For those of you who missed the Choco Taco, keep an eye on Kate's social @katesicecream, or sign up for Kate's newsletter. If you're in Portland, stay chill and stop by Kate's. If not, put a visit to Kate's on your ice cream bucket list.
The new issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine is almost here. It is all about Italy, and our cover stars are Chef Missy Robbins and Chef Nancy Silverton. You can choose which cover you want, or hey, you can buy both. It's a great issue, and I apologize in advance for all the pasta cravings it will induce. Not a day has gone by since we finished this issue that I have not wanted a big bowl of pasta. You could purchase a copy or a subscription on cherrybombe.com, or you can buy a copy at your favorite culinary shop, bookstore, or magazine stand. The link is in our show notes.
Everyone can see from your social, you're cooking up a storm. What ingredients? I mean, California, you have the best produce in the world.
Molly Baz:
Oh my God. Figs are such a big part of my life right now, and I've always loved figs, but they hit so differently over here. I recently built a vegetable garden for the first time in my life. Even at my old house, I didn't have a vegetable garden. It was in the long-term plan. I never got to it. Cut to now, we move into a new house, and one of the first things I did was stand up a vegetable garden with the help of a guy named Horace Cameron, who is just an incredible wild gardener here in L.A. He's a mad genius. He has an incredibly wild yet well-kept garden in Silver Lake at a friend's house, and he's obsessed with figs, so obsessed with ... I've never met a man who loves a fig more than Horace, and he has something like 115 varieties of fig trees growing in his garden, and he's constantly planting new ones, and when he comes over to consult and check on my garden, he brings me figs.
He brought me over a plate full of six different varieties of figs, and he didn't just bring the figs over, he brought them over sliced, open-face on a plate, so that I could see that they were all perfect figs. There was no mystery of, "Is it a good one or is it a bad one?" They were all perfect and it was in plain sight, so I've been eating them fresh and baking with figs a lot. I was working on a recipe just last week for a burnt honey ricotta fig cake, and it hasn't made it across the finish line yet. I'm going to tackle it again this week. The figs were a little soggy in it, which I didn't care for, so I'm going to restructure the cake, but that's probably the ingredient that is speaking to me the most right now.
Kerry Diamond:
Mother Nature knew what she was doing when she invented figs.
Molly Baz:
Oh my gosh. She really did.
Kerry Diamond:
I was just in Willamette Valley in Oregon for an event, and the team was in Portland just for a little bit. We ran to the farmer's market and they had figs, but they had those green ones, they're green on the outside and that beautiful rosy color on the inside. I carried them all back to New York on the plane, and carried them like a dozen eggs, so that they wouldn't all be-
Molly Baz:
Oh my God. They're more precious than ... I mean, they're more precious and more easily breakable and fuck-up-able than a carton of eggs.
Kerry Diamond:
They're so precious. The walk over here to the studio in Gowanus, when I left yesterday, walked home a different route. Martha Stewart told me years ago at Jubilee, "Never take the same route twice." That's one of her big rules.
Molly Baz:
Oh my god. God, that's incredible advice.
Kerry Diamond:
One of her big rules for staying inspired. I think her exact words might've been, "I tell my driver to never take the same route twice," but for me, that's-
Molly Baz:
Yeah, we'll adapt it for the layman.
Kerry Diamond:
Walking, and yeah, exactly, so took a different route back to my apartment yesterday, and passed by a school that has a garden, and they had two giant fig trees, so they must've been growing these forever. The figs, they're still green, but I was like, "Oh, I hope to God someone is going to come and pick those figs," because if I see figs start to hit the ground-
Molly Baz:
It's a no.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm going to have to pick some figs illegally.
Molly Baz:
Yeah. You'll go in there, you'll take care of it.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, so anyway, stay tuned for that one. I have to ask how your crew is. We loved your team so much, Sophia, Tuna, Mr. Boots. How's everybody?
Molly Baz:
Well, Tuna's right here, so we can all see she's alive and well.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, hi, Tuna baby.
Molly Baz:
She's staying with me during the interview. Mr. Boots is downstairs playing right now. He's so great. I know all parents say that, as they should, but he's so special to me, and it's just been such a mind-opening year. He's 14 months now of just really understanding what it is all about, life is all about, and he's been such a big part of that. He has just started taking his first steps. I think he's a little delayed because his belly is too big, because he eats so much. Kerry, he eats more than me, by a lot, and he's, I don't know, 24 inches tall. There's no way that he can fit that much food in there. If he sees food, if he hears food being made, if I'm cooking, it is like, he's hands out and he's like, "Give me that, and if you don't, we're going to have problems," and so he just eats all day long. He has a really big belly and he kind of looks pregnant. I joke that he looks like he's six or seven months pregnant right now, but I think it's why it's taken him so long to learn to walk, because he has this weird center of gravity that's pulling him forward, but we're just assuming that he's going to sort it out for himself. I'd rather have a good eater that can't walk than a picky eater that can.
Kerry Diamond:
Have you sought medical advice for this, or you just decided this is-
Molly Baz:
No, I haven't. We're great friends with our pediatrician and we hang out with him all the time, and I am certain that he would flag it if he were worried.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, good to know, and how's Sophia? We love Sophia on your team.
Molly Baz:
She's great. We love her the most. She's doing everything and then some, and holding me in my personal life and in my professional life. She's a superhuman, and what a special lady.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, we got to know her when we did the cover with you, and we all just fell in love with her and wanted to kidnap her and bring her back to New York with us.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, don't you dare.
Kerry Diamond:
I won't. I promise. What's going on with your next cookbook? Is it out this fall, or am I imagining that?
Molly Baz:
Honestly, I have no idea when it's coming out.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, okay.
Molly Baz:
Not this fall. It's maybe the following spring.
Kerry Diamond:
That was wishful thinking on my part.
Molly Baz:
No, it's not even spring. No, no, no. It's 2027.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, okay. What was I thinking? Maybe, what did I see?
Molly Baz:
You were thinking, "Hey, Molly got her third book deal a really long time ago, her book should be coming out soon," and you would be right about that, except for the fact that I-
Kerry Diamond:
No, not-
Molly Baz:
Put it on pause for a lot of reasons. Then I picked it back up about three months ago, and just last week I developed the final, 100th recipe, so the recipes for the book are done, which feels like a huge sigh of relief, and now I have to go write the entire book, but for some reason I'm not stressed about that. It is well on its way.
Kerry Diamond:
I thought I read that it's called “Less is More.”
Molly Baz:
Oh, yeah, you're right.
Kerry Diamond:
That's what it's called?
Molly Baz:
Yeah, I think I leaked it in an interview I did with a German publication, that maybe a headline somehow came up somewhere, because “More is More” just got published in Germany and I was having an interview and I was talking about “Less is More” really casually, and then I was like, "Oh, did I just do that?" Anyway, here it is, out, but yes. I'm really excited about this third book because it has taught me so much about what is and is not necessary, required, important to do in service of a great meal. It's really all about paring back, stripping back, just simple, easy. I've had to unlearn so many habits that I thought were really important techniques that I had carried with me since my restaurant days, and, "This is how you saute an onion," or, "This is how you start a braise." The truth is, there's a lot of ways to get to really great flavor, and it wasn't until I asked myself to unlearn them that I was able to open up doors and consequently learn new things.
The book that is coming out I feel like is just such a representation of the fact that there's so much to learn about food and it's endless, and you might think that you are, I thought I was, a really great cook. I'm a great cook. I think no one would argue with that, but there are always new ways to be a cook and to be a better cook and a more efficient cook and a lazier cook, frankly. I've learned how to do all those things and it feels really good, so I'm really excited about the book.
Kerry Diamond:
I thought “Less is More” maybe referred to the past few months and what you've gone through since January.
Molly Baz:
It sort of does. It's sort of all of it. It's all wrapped up in that experience, and what that has meant for me as a cook and a person, and my bandwidth. My story of my house burning down is sort of like this subtext for a book that was already in the works around really simplified, pared-down cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
Wanted to talk to you about the house. I mean, I do and I don't want to talk to you about the house. I mean, I know how hard it still is for you because it wasn't that long ago, and I feel very fortunate that I actually got to see the house and see you in the house, and-
Molly Baz:
Yeah, that was special.
Kerry Diamond:
Really understood what that house meant to the two of you, and I'm going to make myself cry. I don't want to make you cry, but there aren't a lot of people's homes I walk into where I think I would love to live there, and I felt that way about what you and Ben had created. First thing I just want to say is, I'm so sorry.
Molly Baz:
Thank you,
Kerry Diamond:
What you two went through, what your whole community went through, what your whole city went through, but you really built something beautiful that you will no doubt build again, and you seem like you're very well on the way to building that. As we were saying, as folks who love you know, you lost your beautiful house and everything inside it in the Altadena fires in January. Just curious how you and Ben are doing today regarding it. I know that's the kind of thing that might take a lifetime to get over.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, on the day-to-day now, I am fine. I am a fully functioning working woman and mom again, which is not something I could have said several months ago. In the day-to-day, I am fine, and I have done a lot of thinking, talking, reflecting, working through what it really means to lose everything. What part of that is actually tragic, because I think it's easy to just be like, "Oh my God, your house burned down. Oh my god, it's terrible." Yes, but it's like, what about it is terrible? I've been working through that personally, and it's actually not about the loss of all the things. The things I thought meant a lot, and now I realize there's not really, aside from a few really important things, like my engagement ring, there's not really any particular object that I need, that I had, that I don't have now or that my life feels like is missing.
I don't really need the things, and in the rebuild process of restocking a whole new house with new items, I have restocked with so much less. I just don't care about stuff the way I used to. The hardest part of it all was the abrupt halt to the life I once knew, and the routine. Of course, it was very tragic also that it was a home that my husband had designed every square inch of, and we were in the middle of renovating this whole new part of the property. It was going to be this pièce de résistance, a big portfolio moment for Ben, who is a furniture designer, for those of you who don't know. It was his life's passion project, and so that was very tragic because there is really no opportunity to do that for a while now, but the thing that was the most disorienting about it was having to start an entirely new routine.
Nothing in the day feels or look the same, not even getting into your car, because our cars also burned down. What I took for granted until this happened was how much my life relies on my ability to go on autopilot and have the routine that I do, and how much that gives me a sense of comfort in the world, to just know, and it's the exact same thing with cooking, which I've been thinking about a lot. A really graceful cook is one who makes no missteps in the kitchen, knows where everything is, the microplane is in that drawer, the cutting board is under there, the sheet pans are down there, and can just dance around the kitchen so fluidly without any fumbles. That is the glory of great cooking, and when I'm in my flow state in the kitchen and I'm doing that, it just feels so right. The thing that was so jarring about losing our home was there was no flow state anymore. Everything was a new learned behavior. It looked different, it felt different, the materiality of the world, everything had a different texture. That was so disorienting and takes up so much mental bandwidth.
It's just a matter of time now, that I feel like I have created new routines for myself that are starting to feel like they've been a little bit lived in, and there's comfort in that, but when they're brand new, it's just like wearing a brand new pair of shoes and you're just like, "I'm getting blisters, but I have to push through, and then they're going to be the most comfortable shoes in the world." That's the experience we've been going through in the last eight months.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you feel like a different person than the Molly before the fire?
Molly Baz:
Yeah, a hundred million percent. It was a very humbling experience and a tenderizing experience, and it came right on the heels of becoming a mother, which is already a humbling and tenderizing experience, and having a baby, and just all of the feelings that come up in that were sort of reinforced by this tragedy that occurred. It has me re-situating myself at all times in the world, and thinking about, what is important? What is of the essence here? Big picture, the big picture feels really top of mind for me all the time now in a way that it didn't before, because I was so just head-down in a life that I knew and was comfortable in, and was just so routine. Yeah, I think it's made me more thoughtful and more self-aware and more tender, and there's probably 25 other adjectives that I will have to describe its effect on me over the course of time, and it's just, things are unfolding in front of me as I speak.
Kerry Diamond:
You are an East Coast girl. How did you wind up in Altadena?
Molly Baz:
Well, I moved to L.A. during the pandemic, and right at the beginning of it, we famously kind of just accidentally got trapped on the West Coast and never went home to our apartment in Brooklyn, and we never saw it again, and we just hired someone to pack the apartment up and drive it across the country and drop it off on our doorstep many months down the line. We ended up in Altadena because I've always, always, always wanted to live in L.A. As I mentioned at the beginning of this interview, I'm just a sunshiny person. The sun speaks to me. I need it. When there is a gray day here, most of L.A. is like, "Hell yeah, we love a moody gray day, we need it because we need the contrast," and I'm just like, "Are you fucking serious? This is not what I signed up for." It happens so rarely.
Altadena specifically was a place that we found through a friend of ours who knew that we were really lightly looking at houses. I don't even know if we had done a budget or figured out if we were pre-approved for a mortgage or anything, could afford anything at all, but she was like, "I found this property, I saw this property in Altadena and it's being worked on, which means I think it's going to come on the market soon, and I have no idea what the deal is. It's not on market yet, but I think you guys need to live here." We were like, "Okay, what is Altadena? No idea. Guess we'll drive and see." Had no idea what it was, walked on the property. I was like, "Oh yeah, we're good here. We will make a home here." Ben was a little more like, "Are you sure?" I was like, "Yeah, this is going to be our home. You're going to rock it, and let's go see if we can get a mortgage now." We did.
As the story goes, it doesn't exist anymore, but that's how we landed in Altadena, and we knew nothing about it, and it was actually like, thank God we landed in such a special place, because I think during the pandemic, people were making all sorts of crazy decisions, myself included. I abandoned my entire life and never looked back, went and bought a house in a town I'd never heard of. Could have gone bad, but it turned out to be Altadena, which is such a special community, and I'm so grateful that I got to be a part of it for those five years, and we'll see what happens with it in the future.
Kerry Diamond:
You wrote a beautiful piece for Vogue recently about your whole experience, and you ended the essay with just two words. You wrote, "Joy prevails." I was wondering, how do you lean into joy when you've gone through something like you did?
Molly Baz:
Well, I can only speak from my own experience, so I just want to set that up, because I know that everyone is dealing with different tragedies in the world right now. There's a lot going on. Everyone who dealt with the Altadena fires has processed it in a different way. For me, joy is such a part of my life, pre-fire. It is just part and parcel of who I am. I find moments of joy every day, mostly in the kitchen, and then also with the relationships around me. Cooking provides me joy, has provided joy for me since the day I started doing it 20-whatever, I don't even know how old I am, much more than that. 30 years ago. It took me a second to grapple with the idea that even in the wake of a really terrible tragedy that feels just devastating and suffocating and where there feels like there's no clear end path yet, joy can still exist and find its way through that every day, if you're open to it.
That's why I say this is just a one woman's experience, is I think that I have a predisposition to be open to and to seek out joy. It's just part of who I am, but not everyone's wired that way, and so for a lot of people it may be harder to collect it again, especially when the odds are stacked against you. What was challenging for me was letting myself find it. There was a guilty complex I had inside me that was like, "This is not an appropriate time to take joy in something. Don't get all excited about getting sushi tonight. Your house just burned down." That's not the normal me. The normal me is, at 12:00, I'm thinking about what's for dinner, and I'm getting hyped if we're going out for sushi tonight. I'm thinking about it all day and I know exactly what my order is going to be, and once I was able to recognize that I was suppressing the joy because I felt like it was not appropriate or something and I just let it out, everything felt a lot easier.
That's the only advice that I would share, is, it is okay. You as a human being, you can hold multitudes inside you, and you can be devastated and joyful at the same time. Those are all human emotions that don't need to exist separately from one another. That's, I think, been a big learning in the last nine months. I can hold a lot at the same time, and joy can be one of those things.
Kerry Diamond:
Speaking of holding a lot, I want to ask you about work next, because obviously the past seven months you've had relocation to deal with, physically and emotionally, but you seem to be the busiest you've been in a long time, work-wise. You've got so many projects. I want to go through some of them. One of them is with Special K. Folks might remember, when you were pregnant, you did that fantastic box of Special K and you're pregnant on the box, eating cereal. Mr. Boots is in your belly.
Molly Baz:
I have it right in front of me, right now.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, do you?
Molly Baz:
I look at it every day. It's on my desk. The thing I stare at every day.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that box. It's impossible to get your hands on it now. It's like a collector's item. There is, however, one on eBay. Did you know that? Just one.
Molly Baz:
No, I did not. I love that.
Kerry Diamond:
It's $20.
Molly Baz:
I should start selling my box. I should see this box.
Kerry Diamond:
Anyway, it's $20. There's only one of them on the entire internet, so ...
Molly Baz:
Someone go snag it.
Kerry Diamond:
Somebody should snap that up right now before they raise the price. You've always had a fun relationship with Special K. You would eat the Special K flakes in a bowl with salt and ice cubes. I would never think to put ice cubes in my breakfast cereal. How did that even come about?
Molly Baz:
This goes back to my obsession with optimization and finding flavor. In my personal life and as a human being, I'm an optimizer. Everyone knows that about me. It's a blessing and a curse. It's kind of fucking annoying because sometimes I'm just like, "We have to get the best meal ever right now," and also it's why we get the best meal ever, because I'm going to find it. It's the same thing with my bowl of cereal. I think that I deeply believe that Special K and just all cereal in general is most delicious when it's served ice cold, and so I have ever since I remember been putting ice cubes in my cereal bowl in order to make sure that the milk is frigid, because then everything is just more refreshing and crunchy and it's just a perfect experience. Then, when I became a cook, I started thinking about seasoning and asking myself the question of, "Why don't we season our cereal?"
We're basically taking a product that is properly seasoned in and of itself, but then we're diluting it in a big bowl of fatty whole milk, and that requires a little bit of seasoning. That milk needs a little seasoning to make sure that it sings when it's swallowing up the Special K, and so then I started putting salt on my cereal, just the way I do when I'm seasoning a steak or a salad, or, everything needs to be seasoned. If you've never tried it, everyone out there who's listening, I promise you'll never go back. That's my story with cereal and that's my story with Special K, and people kind of thought I was crazy, but I talked about it on the back of the box and encouraged people to do it. I think there's a lot of ways to eat a bowl of cereal, but I think this is the best one.
Kerry Diamond:
All right, I'm going to have to try it. I will confess, I've never put ... I put salt on my oatmeal when I cook it, but I have not put salt on my breakfast cereal.
Molly Baz:
Oh man, you've got a little salt and butter on your oatmeal, forget about it.
Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm, but I will try it with my cereal-cereal, and we just need to talk about what a big deal that box was. I mean, we've seen athletes on boxes, but you were the first pregnant woman on a cereal box.
Molly Baz:
I'm like, "How did that happen?" I still don't ... That part of it hasn't really registered. I just assumed. We've seen a lot of women on boxes, we've seen a lot of athletes. I just assumed that at some point in the history of cereal there would've been a pregnant athlete, at the very least, but no. It turns out there wasn't, so when Special K offered me the honor, really, of being the first pregnant woman on a cereal box, I was like, "Of course I'm going to take this," and also, this is bigger than me. This is about pregnant women and visibility for pregnancy and the whole process, and what that looks like, and how different that looks on everyone. For us to celebrate that in such a way that puts a pregnant woman in the leagues with the most iconic American athletes of all time, because, you know what? Being pregnant is an Olympic feat. It's one of the greatest athletic feats that a woman can do, is give birth, and so I think it was very appropriate and fitting that the follow-up to kind of the history of putting women athletes on boxes was a pregnant lady who wasn't an athlete at all. The opposite of an athlete, a cook.
Kerry Diamond:
I don't know if you're the opposite of an athlete, but I get your point. Maybe I'd need to plunk down the $20 and get that box off eBay, because I said if Cherry Bombe had a women and food museum, I would certainly put that box in our museum.
Molly Baz:
They should. That would be incredible.
Kerry Diamond:
I know we should. Maybe I'll talk to MOFAD, we can do a little-
Molly Baz:
Do a little one-time exhibit, like a three-month exhibit that's just heroing women in food over the ... Oh, I love it.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, you'd have to be in there multiple times, so-
Molly Baz:
That's fine.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, we should definitely talk, but you have done so much for pregnancy positivity, and I think that's so wonderful. I mean, I don't have kids, so don't necessarily have a dog in that fight, but every time I hear somebody snicker when you see ... I mean, pregnant women dress so cool these days, in ways that they couldn't years ago, and nursing moms. Everybody should be allowed to nurse wherever, whenever, however they need to or want to, and anytime I hear someone criticize how a pregnant woman is dressed or how a pregnant person is nursing in public, I almost want a lightning bolt to come out of the sky and strike them down.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, I mean, it's insane that we're, in 2025, we're still hiding breastfeeding in public. I'm not, as I think people are aware, and people have their opinions about that and that's totally fine, but I know that many women are, and even in the most subtle ways, of, so many of my female friends work in corporate jobs, and the nursing rooms they go to are just dark closets that are forgotten little ... Basically like a janitor's closet that maybe once housed a mop, and has now just been turned into a ... It's like, "No, give them windows on the world. They're doing the greatest thing that a woman can possibly do. Let's make it lux."
Kerry Diamond:
Nurse in your office, nurse on the Zoom, who cares? If you do care, listeners, if any of you are like, "Ugh, I care," I beg you to rethink why you think that way. It's crazy. Anyway, but thank you, Molly. You've done a lot of good and a lot of us appreciate it. Speaking of Special K, as part of your program with them, you're also doing some fun recipes. You did the Mi-Ma-Mo ... I need to say that again. You did the Mi-Ma-Mo-Glo Muffins. Those looked so good. I saw them on your Instagram. Where can people find the recipe?
Molly Baz:
The recipes are in my recipe club at mollybaz.com, which is just a place where all of my weekly recipes are dropped. Here's the thing, I have never really been a muffin person. There's a lot of breakfast pastries that I would pluck off a shelf or off a pastry counter before I would choose a muffin, but I've always really loved a morning glory muffin. I think it's because it is similar-ish to carrot cake, which is my favorite cake in the world, and so I think I see a similarity in it, which draws me to it. If I'm ever going to order a muffin, it's going to be a morning glory muffin, and I had never developed a recipe for one, and so I decided to take it upon myself. In this partnership with Special K, which is called Special K My Way, I have basically taken on the challenge of, if I'm going to upgrade a bowl of cereal with salt and milk, what else can I do to my Special K?
Actually, there are so many ways, inventive, fun ways that you can cook with it, and it doesn't need to just be a bowl of cereal and milk, which, by the way, is a perfect food. One of those recipes was the Mi-Ma-Mo-Glo muffins, where the Special K basically gets soaked in milk and then that becomes the batter, to which you add nuts and coconut and all of your dry ingredients, and raspberries and beets, which turn them bright pink, and then you scoop that into muffin tins and you top them with a big tumble of maple and sesame coated Special K, and that covers the muffin top, and when it bakes in the oven, it kind of caramelizes onto it and it becomes this very crunchy, crackly, maple-y Special K topping. It sort of changed muffins for me. Now I'm like, if every muffin could be a Mi-Ma-Mo-Glo muffin at a pastry shop, it is the thing that I would pull off the shelf. That's just one of the many recipes that I've been working on, but the other one that I'm very excited about is this mashup that I have created of French toast and bostock. Do you know what bostock is?
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, tell me. I know the word, but I couldn't tell you what it is.
Molly Baz:
It's a pastry, basically, that uses day old brioche and smothers it in frangipane, which is the same stuff that's smothered on an almond croissant, and then bakes it in the oven. It kind of reinvigorates old brioche, and so I made a version of it that's sort of like a mashup of French toast and bostock that uses the Special K Red Berries, where you soak brioche in French toast custard, vanilla custard, and then you add this raspberry almond frangipane, and then you top it with Special K Red Berries, and similar thing happens to the Mi-Ma-Mo-Glo Muffins, where when you bake it, you get this crackly, crunchy, sugary exterior, but when you cut into it, it's soft and custard-y like French toast, and then there's this layer of almond cream that tastes like an almond croissant. It's just one of the greatest things I've tasted in a long time, so listeners, mollybaz.com.
Kerry Diamond:
It's funny you say that about muffins, because I, I don't know, haven't really been a muffin gal my whole life, but had my most amazing muffin moment, was in Portland before you opened. This was earlier in the year before you opened Face Plant, and we went to this amazing little coffee shop called Courier Coffee, and they had a yogurt muffin that was like a canelé and a muffin had a baby. They update it with seasonal fruit, and this one had roasted pear, I think, so the inside was moist and the outside was caramelized like a canelé, and I was like, "How the heck did they do this?" I think it had yogurt and oat flour in it.
Molly Baz:
I have to look it up.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, but wait, the kicker is we got them right when they pulled them out of the oven, and they were still warm.
Molly Baz:
Forget about it. I'll look them up and I'll try to reverse engineer it. That sounds incredible. Yeah. Why aren't canelés turned into muffins?
Kerry Diamond:
Right.
Molly Baz:
Just make a canelé batter, but then top it like a muffin. Genius.
Kerry Diamond:
Anyway, if you are back in Portland to check on Face Plant, you want to go check out Courier Coffee. Tell us about Face Plant. Is it fast food?
Molly Baz:
Yeah. Okay, so Face Plant is a new venture. Well, new to the world, not new to me. I've been working on it for four years now, I think, and it just launched publicly, but it is a 100% entirely plant-based fast food joint in Portland, Oregon. The menu is very focused and pared down and classic, kind of in the style of In-N-Out. It's very inspired by In-N-Out and McDonald's. Those are our competitors. We don't look at other plant-based fast food restaurants as our competitors so much as the really big-wig fast food meat joints. I am the head of culinary of it, and so I've been working on the recipes for four years, and we just opened our doors. Our mission is to reduce global warming by changing the behavior of the American fast food eater and making a menu that we think is as delicious as a McDonald's or an In-N-Out or Burger King, whatever your favorite fast food joint is, that happens to be plant-based, but that isn't screaming from the rooftops, "We're a vegan restaurant."
It's like, that's not the point. The point is we make really good food, and we make food that is as crave-able as the other guys, and at a similar price point. This was an enormous challenge for me. I love a challenge, so I took it on, I think, not even realizing how hard it would be to create that kind of crave-ability, moistness, juiciness, savoriness that you expect from an In-N-Out burger. It was a very winding journey, working on the menu, but I finally broke through. I worked with my culinary partner, Nora, who is also on my team now in all things culinary, and we cracked the code, I think. I'm so curious for you to go, Kerry, because the whole reason that I was brought on as the head of culinary is because I am not a plant-based eater, because have a standard of eating fast food that involves meat, and that we're not going to settle for anything less.
Perhaps what's most impressive on the menu, I think, even though I worked on the burger patty for so long, are the milkshakes, which you would never, ever, ever know are plant-based. I think I could fool even the most astute palate. They just taste so clean, and we've got several different flavors, and they're just so delicious. That was quite a feat as well, so anyway, it's open seven days a week. We're going to expand to more locations in the coming years, but it's off to a really great start and it's been really busy, and people are loving it.
Kerry Diamond:
It's such a great name.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, it's a great name. The branding is great. It feels like it's been around forever. It feels pretty iconic already, even though we're so new. Yeah, if you're in the Portland area, come eat at Face Plant.
Kerry Diamond:
Listeners, go check it out. Send us a picture, if you do.
Molly Baz:
Tag myself.
Kerry Diamond:
Tag Molly and Cherry Bombe. That just scratches the surface of what you're doing. You've also got your wine company, you've got Ayoh, your mayo company. Congrats on getting Ayoh into Whole Foods. That's amazing.
Molly Baz:
Thank you. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Does everyone tell you you have to do a collab with Ayo?
Molly Baz:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. We tried already.
Kerry Diamond:
You tried? Okay.
Molly Baz:
She passed, so we're just like, "Okay, we're just going to keep growing and then eventually she's going to be like," I notice you. Yeah, it was the first thing I thought, was, "Oh my God, we have to do a campaign with her."
Kerry Diamond:
She passed on a Cherry Bombe cover, too, if that makes you feel better, so ...
Molly Baz:
It does.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, but we're still trying, also, we're not giving up.
Molly Baz:
We still love her.
Kerry Diamond:
We still love her. We're not giving up. Working on all these brands and all the incredible projects that you have, what have you learned about yourself as an entrepreneur?
Molly Baz:
I love seeing things to completion. I think it is the thrill of it all for me, and that is why I have stood up so many businesses and different projects and have so many sort of different lanes that I play in, in my work, is that, first of all, I love variety. Being an entrepreneur in the way that I am allows me to wear a lot of different hats and do so many different things in a day. I can be cooking and photo-shooting and meetings and partnerships, and mayo this, and interview that. It's just like, I really enjoy the kind of kaleidoscope that working for oneself offers, but what I've learned about myself is that, yeah, I thrive off of completion and getting tasks done, and so that's a great model for someone who's an entrepreneur, because it's sort of all on you to complete things and make sure that things get across the finish line.
I've also learned that it is so important to recognize and understand what your strengths are, and lean on people to carry the weight of your weaknesses. That's something that I feel like I learned pretty early on, maybe because of insecurity, of being like, "I don't think I have the expertise here to do this," and even if I did, I think that it is wise advice to focus on what you're really good at and what brings you a lot of joy, and then find support for the things that are also equally important in a business but might not be your strong suit. That's how I'm able to manage all the projects that are happening. There are people around me, teams, incredibly talented people who I'm like, "You're better at this than me, let's do it together," and that's allowed me to keep expanding my business.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you actually keep track of it? Are you a spreadsheet gal? Do you have a project management system you love?
Molly Baz:
Yeah, we have different project management systems for different projects, but all of my teams are on Notion, and many of them Slack, and I'm not on either of them, but Sophia uses Notion to organize our whole workspace, world, everything. It's her little world over there, but I don't use it because my brain is just not wired that way. For me, the simplest thing is just a running to-do list in my Notes app, and that is where my everything, my every priority is logged, and I'm sure that there is evidence to support the fact that I should be on a project management system that's more nuanced, but for whatever reason, I almost need less chaos, and sometimes those systems feel like there's too many bells and whistles, and I'm just like, "Stuff to do, do it." It's just in my Notes app. Yeah, we're kind of all over the place.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that you're running your empire from the Notes app. That's encouraging for a lot of us.
Molly Baz:
It can be done.
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly. All right, Molly. Oh, I had a whole speed round. We're going to throw that out the window. What are you streaming right now? That's always a fun one.
Molly Baz:
We are watching “Hacks.” Is that what you mean?
Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm.
Molly Baz:
We are watching “Hacks,” but I caveat that by saying I watch 10 minutes of every episode and then fall asleep, so I'm loosely following the plot line, but I'm a tired lady at the end of the day.
Kerry Diamond:
You have to watch “Too Much” next, if you like “Hacks.”
Molly Baz:
I will. I will watch the first 10 minutes of every episode.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be, and why?
Molly Baz:
Francis Mallmann. He knows how to cook in the wild, and I feel like we're going to eat so well, so probably him. He seems like a nice guy too.
Kerry Diamond:
Good answer. All right, Molly Baz, I love you. I'm so sorry, what you've been through this year. You are resilient and it made me very happy to read that Vogue essay and see that you still have the capacity to lean into joy.
Molly Baz:
I do. I will never lose that. Thank you for having me on again, and always.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Molly for joining me, and I can't wait to chat with her at Jubilee L.A. If you're interested in attending, be sure to add your name to the wait list. We always have a few spots that open up. I'll put the link in our show notes. If you haven't listened to my past interviews with Molly, go back and check them out. I would love for you to give Radio Cherry Bombe a follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Special thanks to Joseph Hazan at Newsstand Studios. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu, and our talent guru is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the Bombe.