The Art of Resurrecting Lost Desserts

Valerie Gordon is the owner and operator of Valerie Confections, a Los Angeles bakery that specializes in resurrecting dessert recipes lost to time. Her interest first piqued after she recreated a popular coffee crunch cake from California’s iconic Blum’s Bakery. Since then, she’s taken her detective skills to the max, searching the menu vault at the Los Angeles library and reaching out to residents to find and bring back cakes of dessert past. So far, she’s successfully recreated a whole array of forgotten desserts, including the banana shortcake from Chasen’s and the grapefruit cake from Brown Derby.