ATLANTA — It’s Friday afternoon inside Renee Jackson’s kitchen, but it’s not business as usual for her today.
Instead of baking macarons for her business, she’s teaching kids the art of making the temperamental cookies.
“I love making macarons,” says Jackson. “I always call it a labor of love.”
Jackson’s love affair with the French dessert started with a trip to Paris. Already a successful baker, she set out to perfect the macaron. It wasn’t easy at first. After years of trial and error, she finally perfected her recipe and decided to make a business out of it. “I developed tennis elbow in the process. I was a woman on a mission,” says Jackson.
She started an online bakery called “Mad Macs” from her kitchen counter and saves money by running it completely out of her home. “I was looking for ways to minimize my costs. So, I used things like Weebly to create my website to get people to find me,“ says Jackson.
Although she’s a small business, she’s giving back in a big way.
“Because I love to cook, I love sharing that with kids and getting them excited to do something on their own." Through her volunteer work around Atlanta, she’s made connections with organizations who bring kids into her kitchen.
“Kids give you instantaneous feedback,” says Jackson. “You can instantly tell when they’re enjoying what they’re doing, when they’re having a good time and that’s supremely gratifying.”
Baking macarons is no easy task. It takes patience, persistence and perseverance, all skills Jackson is trying to instill in the kids who come her way. “Making macarons, it's very precise. There will be elements of measuring and those sort of things. Those are math skills, those are definitely skills they could use outside the kitchen,” says Jackson.
Through her passion for baking, Jackson is teaching valuable life skills with an even more valuable message: “The more you try, the more persistent you are about it ... the more you work at it — the better you will get.”
