YUM: Delectable treats from LiLLiPiES take center stage in baker Jen Carson’s new book about the Princeton bakery, to be debuted at the shop during Pi Day festivities on Saturday, March 14.

By Anne Levin

Jen Carson, proprietor of LiLLiPiES Bakery in Princeton Shopping Center, has always loved cookbooks. The first loaf she ever baked as a child in Belleville, New Jersey, was from a cookbook she discovered in her elementary school library.

“I thought it was so magical. And I always dreamed of writing one of my own,” Carson said during a chat at LiLLiPiES on a recent Monday, the one day of the week that the bakery is closed.

Carson has recently made that dream a reality. Titled simply LiLLiPiES, her self-published cookbook will be launched this Saturday, March 14 as part of Princeton’s Pi Day celebrations honoring the birthday of Albert Einstein. A book signing at the bakery will start at 3:14 p.m. (3.14 is also the approximate value of pi). The 206-page volume is also available on Amazon.com.

LiLLiPiES is filled with photos by Chiara Goldenstern and illustrations by Sofia Schreiber, both Princeton High School juniors. Along with easy-to-follow recipes for different kinds of breads, pastries, cookies, pies, and more, the book includes helpful pointers on measuring, the best implements to use, bagel-shaping, challah-braiding, and pie crust crimping, among other techniques. There are sections on breakfast, beverages, and vegan baking. There is even a recipe for dog biscuits.

Carson has cooked for as long as she can remember. She grew up in a family of Italian American women, and her grandfather was a butcher in Newark. Some of her earliest recollections center around food. “My first memory of cooking is of making ravioli with my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother on a piece of plywood at the kitchen table,” she writes in the introduction to her book. “I remember the texture of the wood and how the dough slid easily back and forth on the surface without sticking. I was about 5 years old, just old enough to have the attention span to help in this multi-step process.”

Relatives warned Carson to avoid working in the food business. She took their advice — at first. But baking and owning her own bakery eventually won out. “I’ve followed a very weird path,” she said. “I studied education and math in college. I taught elementary school for six years before my husband and I had children. Then, when they were really little, I started getting baking for a friend’s company. And it took off from there.”

Carson found a commercial kitchen space at her church, sharing it with a few others. She formed her own company, calling it Jen’s Cakes and Pastries, and began baking in earnest, getting up at 3 a.m. when her family was still asleep. She started selling at local farmers markets and began wholesaling to Small World Coffee.

“I realized that I had found my passion,” Carson writes in the book. But she had a long way to go before opening LiLLiPiES. She studied restaurant management on weekends at The French Culinary Institute in Manhattan. She worked for Brick Farm Market and Small World. Finally, after two locations fell through, she opened the bakery, which she named after the first product she ever sold, at Princeton Shopping Center. It quickly earned a following not only for the baked goods, but also for open mic nights, cooking and baking classes, and a monthly practice of donating 10 percent of proceeds to a local cause.

The cookbook is $29.99 at the bakery and $39.99 on amazon.com. All proceeds will be donated to Princeton School Gardens Cooperative.

The idea for the book came together with the help of Sophia Schreiber, who works at the bakery, and Chiara Goldenstern, who is a family friend. “We put it together as a document with Sophia’s illustrations and Chiara’s photographs,” said Carson. “I’m actually glad it is self-published, because we had full control of how we wanted to do it. We’re all so proud of it.”

Carson credits her staff for much of her success. “I love that we have photos of the whole staff in the book,” she said. “The people who work here are the most important part of this bakery.”