Business Profile: The Dessertist, Croton
Croton resident Samantha Mittler had a specific reason for naming her new business The Dessertist.
“I’ve always been an artistic person,” she said last week. “When I moved to New York I was strapped for space and I started to use my kitchen as my art studio and desserts became my medium.”
“When I started doing more of this then I felt like I was a dessert artist,” she said. “I just merged them together and became Dessertist.”
Since January, The Dessertist, located on Maple Street in Croton, has served as a showcase for her various dessert creations. “Croton is such an amazing place where you have so many people who really appreciate artistic ability and the unique quality of product,” she said. “Our ability to create the things we do is not like any bakery around here.”
Mittler sells a variety of small bite desserts at her bakery and does extensive baking for carry out and catering orders
Her dessert pizzas feature new toppings every day including caramel chocolate sweet cream and “The Munches,” which includes a milk chocolate cream fudge, cookies and cream, house made caramel, potato chips and pretzels.
Mittler’s dessert tacos are chocolate chip cookie taco shells that hold such fillings as peanut butter, marshmallow, caramel, fudge, and creams. Her cake pops also come in a variety of flavors.
Mittler stressed that the small bite dessert selection changes daily.
The Dessertist features a flavor menu, consisting of over 100 flavors, which Mittler created and can be featured in nine types of desserts. “You can pick and choose what you want,” Mittler said. “I can come up with a custom flavor just for you.”
Catering is a major part of her business. Mittler can make anything from wedding and sheet cakes to assortments of a variety of her creations for groups from a few people to thousands of guests, Mittler said.
Though her forte is now dessert baking, Mittler has no formal training in the culinary arts. “Everything I learned was from my family,” she said. But Mittler said she has honed her craft working “with a lot of incredible pastry chefs,” adding she has taught at culinary schools.
Her professional life was originally devoted to business, working in finance on Wall Street, while baking on the side.
Even though she was not baking full-time, Mittler said her creations were becoming noted by people working in the culinary field. As a result, she became involved with organizations, festivals and the Food Network, Mittler said. “I really started growing really fast which is why I was able to take that leap of faith last year and say ‘All right, it’s time to live my dream,” she said.
“That’s the most satisfying part of this job is really just making people happy,” Mittler said.
Mittler has baked for events put on by the Food Network. “It’s exhausting but a lot of fun,” she said. She is participating in the network’s annual Food and Wine Festival, which is scheduled for August 13 through 16 in New York City.
Mittler said she enjoys working for the chefs featured on the Food Network. “They’re fantastic. I’ve really been so lucky to be part of this group and to be recognized with this group where even still I look at them as such inspirational chefs,” she said. “When it comes down to it, they’re just real people.”
Mittler’s five-year-old daughter, Charley, also gets into the act at the bakery. “She has grown with this brand,” Mittler said. Not yet six, Charley can bake a batch of cookies from scratch, Mittler said. ”As a working mom I’m really fortunate that I’m in a business that she can be a part in at such a young age and enjoy it,” Mittler said.
Working with her daughter has influenced her to assist with children’s events and charities, Mittler said. Mittler has been particularly interested in helping Cookies for Kids Cancer which she has been involved with for about three years.
“It’s an amazing, amazing organization that became very close to my heart very quickly,” she said. Mittler said she met personally with the founder of the organization, Gretchen Witt, whose young son, Liam, died of cancer. All proceeds from donations, including funds collected from bake sales, go to fund pediatric cancer research. “One penny of every dollar” spent on cancer research goes for pediatric cancer studies, Mittler said. “Pediatric cancer is the number one killer among young children.”
The Dessertist is located at 50 Maple St. in Croton, next to the Wells Fargo bank branch. For more information, call 914-862-4016, send an e-mail to info@thedessertist,com or visit thedessertist.com.
