Meet Lindsey Leite

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Lindsey Leite.

Hi Lindsey, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Born in South Africa to Scottish parents, my food journey started early! As a five-year-old, I’d loved to bake cakes without a recipe while my mom was at work.

I remembered the basic ingredients and method having watched my mother, an accomplished baker, repeat the processes many times over. The concoctions were variously successful, but my efforts were always celebrated after our dinner, and family members ate as much, or as little, as they could manage (or occasionally stomach!).

Later, I would read recipe books and try different dishes, savory and sweet, usually trying things out on my now husband. As a new mom, I freshly cooked and made all my daughters’ food. Peeling and steaming endless batches of fruits and vegetables and later adding in stewed meats to make homemade baby food. When we moved to Colorado and bought a coffee shop, my interest and skills in food and baking were tested by the altitude!

However, after much trial and error and the ongoing development of recipes, we now serve an extensive menu of breakfast and lunch items, baked goods, and treats.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I doubt if many roads are truly smooth! Having grown up in South Africa, where the altitude is similar to Colorado, I learned to bake and cook successfully.

When we lived in England for many years, I had to work from a whole new set of recipes. Then, we moved to Colorado, and the altitude issue didn’t dawn on me until a customer of our newly purchased coffee shop ordered a chocolate cake for a friend’s birthday.

Blindly and without thinking, I pulled out my favorite British cake recipe and set to work, confident that all would be well. My grandfather, on my mother’s side, had been the village baker in the Scottish village they lived in for his whole life. Baking is in my genes, right?

Wrong! Three attempts later, my chocolate ‘cake’ was more chocolate ‘collapse.’ The glaring, somewhat accusing crater in the center of the pan filled me with dread. With less than 24 hours before the customer was picking up her cake, I took to the internet to try and figure it all out. Duh! The altitude! Cake recipes designed for sea level would not succeed here.

So, armed with a new recipe and some helpful advice, I baked what I hoped would be the last attempt. Success! Some delightful buttercream filling and decorative rosettes later, and the customer was more than happy with her cake, never suspecting the drama that had preceded it!

I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Although I come from a family of professional and amateur bakers, I have never personally had any formal culinary training.

Many of the skills I have developed as a chef and baker are self-learned and taught. I read cookbooks and watched cookery shows extensively. However, like other family members, I’m also a super taster, being a person who can more accurately identify and taste flavors than the “average” person.

It’s using these skills and also instincts that have helped me develop recipes for our coffee shop. I’m fortunate to intuitively know what flavors pair well, what foods are seasonal, and what ingredients are a match made in heaven and not hell!

While I’m very proud of the recipes I have developed for the coffee shop, including the biscuits and gravy that I have never tasted (I’m gluten intolerant) to the “Americanized” Scotch eggs, cakes, and pastries, it’s the online cooking classes that we offered, that I’m especially proud of.

For these classes, I developed and tested recipes that could be made in one hour. Participants received their shopping and equipment list ahead of time, and then, on the evening of the class, we would all cook together, live and in real-time. We encouraged families to have younger children set the table for a family meal while older children helped and followed along with the cooking too.

The feedback from families who were sometimes cooking from scratch for the first time was overwhelming and heartwarming. Moms and dads thanked me for recipes their kids could help make, food that was delicious and nutritious, and an opportunity to eat and spend time together as a family.

Food memories and celebrations remain the most vivid in most people’s memories. To be a small part of that was a real privilege. Now, my own daughters have joined me in the kitchen, both with a unique but excellent set of culinary talents. My older daughter is an especially accomplished baker, managing to make both regular and gluten-free scones, biscuits, and other “delicate” items.

With her naturally cold hands, she excels and surpasses me in this kind of dough and pastry baking, where cold butter and my hot hands are not good friends! She is also an accomplished cook and prefers to focus on cuisines and dishes I typically don’t cook, both for variety and also so that no comparison can be made to her cooking: “No one else’s food tastes as good as mom’s!”

My younger daughter is an accomplished, creative cook. She regularly experiments with ingredients and dishes but can also work the line in our coffee shop and produce beautiful food quickly and expertly. She enjoys cake decorating more than making pastries and enjoys the aspects of plating, because “people eat with their eyes first”. She’s not afraid to make something without a recipe and also instinctively knows what will work and what won’t.

That my daughters can now work with me and, in some cases, demonstrate mastery in areas that surpass my skills is easily my most proud accomplishment.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
In my experience, I see cooking and baking going back to scratch. I think people are, by and large, fed up eating highly processed meals all the time. The health challenges that this kind of lifestyle brings are becoming more and more prevalent, too.

I believe people will seek out the skills and information they need to prepare food that is healthier, locally available, and seasonal. Sourcing vegetables, dairy, and meat products produced on small, organic, ethical farms will be the way we reclaim food and the family celebrations that come with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wesleyowenscoffee.com
• Instagram: @wesley_owens_coffee
• Facebook: www.Facebook.com/wesleyowenscoffee

Image Credits
Fabian Leite, Lindsey Leite, Tower of Tea Time Treats, Charlie Searle, Juliana, Lindsey, and Gabriella