Flintridge Prep Alum Sets Sights on Culinary School

Decadent chocolate cupcakes adorned with white frosting and whimsical orange butterflies. A vanilla cake presented with a bright pink bow and daisies. These and many more are the culinary creations by Jessica Leng, baker extraordinaire and 2007 alum.

Leng applied to the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley in March and was ecstatic to find out that she had been recently been accepted to the prestigious academy. She will be enrolling in a two-year’s associates degree in baking and pastry, where she will be learning everything from baking breakfast breads like croissants to making ice creams.

“Partly, I like baking cakes and cupcakes ‘cause I like eating them. I bake to suite my palate,” said Leng. “I think they’re super delicious and super fun. I like how they are a canvas and they take whatever you want to put on them. You can do so much with cakes and cupcakes now and they’re like works of art.”

Leng started baking at four years old when she baked her first set of Christmas cookies with her aunt. Baking cookies during Christmas eventually became a yearly tradition.

“Baking has been part of my home life. As the years progressed, I got more and more into it,” said Leng. “It’s definitely been something important I do with my family and friends.”

Sue Hodge, a librarian at Flintridge Prep who’s known Leng for ten years, remembers Leng’s culinary expertise at Flintridge Prep. During her eleventh and twelfth grades, Leng would often bake cakes for friends who were having birthdays and she would ask Hodge if she could leave the cake at the librarians’ desk until lunch time to surprise whoever the cake was for.

“This is a girl who has the most wonderful heart. She is just one of the nicest, most genuine people I know,” said Hodge. “She’s somebody who does things for people without wanting to be in the limelight about it. She has enthusiasm for everything that she does.”

Hodge didn’t realize baking was such a passion for Leng until later.  Hodge was amazed by Leng’s launch of Cakes by Jessica, a freelance cake business, during college and photos from the business’s site that highlighted some of Leng’s desserts made from scratch in her dorm at Vassar College.

While majoring in Latin American studies at Vassar, Leng’s Cakes by Jessica spread by word of mouth. She received dozens of orders for cakes and cupcakes for birthdays, weddings, and bat mitzvahs. During Leng’s first year in college, she realized baking was a career she wanted to pursue and, during her summers, she worked at bakeries like Aunt Joy’s in Burbank that would give her first-hand knowledge and practice.

“It was amazing to me how her skills improved over the years. She’s fantastic,” said Hodge. “I’m just thrilled for her that she gets to go to culinary school and live out her dreams. I can’t think anyone who deserves to live out her dreams more than Jessica,” said Hodge.