Aspiring restaurant owner bakes cakes for children

Hendrickson makes professional looking cakes with multi-colored piped roses on the sides.

Senior Mackenzie Hendrickson loves to make cakes and has increasingly been asked by her teachers and other adults to make cakes for their children’s birthday parties. The senior hopes to someday open up her own restaurant and please many with her culinary skills. 

When did you become vegan? Why? I’ve been vegetarian for a year. I have been vegan for like five months. I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” for a research project, and than it really opened my eyes to what animals go through. 

How has your vegan experience been? “It’s been really good. I like experimenting with new foods. A lot of people think that vegan food won’t taste good. Like they ask me what do I eat? Well, there is a lot that you can eat actually, and you can make it taste really good too. 

Do you think veganism enhanced your cooking skills? Yeah, I think so because I have to work with a lot of new foods that I am not used to. A lot of vegan recipes are fun and interesting, so I am working with ingredients that I don’t know. 

How has baking/cooking been as a vegan? Baking has been hard because a lot of times you bake with eggs and milk, so that transition has been hard, but I still have been baking cakes for kids birthday parties. 

Do you have a business? I mean not really, but I have more and more people asking me, so it’s kind of  becoming something. I’m still just doing it for fun. 

What do you get your inspiration from for cooking/baking? Do you follow any food bloggers? Baking, I probably see a lot of the things on Pinterest that I try to recreate. I combine different ideas to make my own version of the cake. With being vegan, there are a lot of different Instagram accounts that give inspiration. 

What has been your biggest success regarding food? I think the last cake that I made was the best thing I have done. It looked really professional. It was my second time doing flowers on cake like that, and I was really happy on how that turned out. 

Are you doing anything with food in the future? I don’t know what I am majoring in college.  I was thinking about restaurant management. I want to open my own restaurant.