From Counseling to Confections: Chef Rebecca Shuster’s Sweet Journey

Caring for your mental needs sometimes requires a change of pace, like baking a new type of pie or walking to the new pastry shop in town. But for some, depression is more dark and profound.

Chef Rebecca Shuster aimed to help struggling people through her career as a counseling psychologist. After earning her master's degree, Chef Rebecca began working with troubled teens who experienced extreme depression.

"One of the things I had trouble with was working with adolescents, and I worried about them. That was the hard part of the field," Chef Rebecca says. "I couldn't leave it there and go home and relax; I always worried about the kids."

As a mother herself, the stress of the work, combined with additional personal challenges, pushed Chef Rebecca to find a profession she could excel in that also allowed her to support herself. This period of soul-searching brought Chef Rebecca back to one of her favorite passions: baking.

"My great-grandmother baked, my grandma baked and my mother baked with me," Chef Rebecca says. "So I've always been into baking as a hobby."

She got a job at a local bakery in New Jersey and fell in love with the craft all over again. Early mornings prepping the day's pastries spoke to Chef Rebecca, who realized she wanted to dive further into the career — but on her terms.

The realization that she could start her own business inspired her to enhance the baking skills she learned from her mother and grandmother. When Chef Rebecca began researching culinary schools, the Institute of Culinary Education became her leading choice. The school had an esteemed reputation, and as a New Jersey resident, she found it easy to commute to lower Manhattan. Most importantly, the school offered a Pastry & Baking Arts diploma.

"I wanted to learn more technical baking skills. I learned things like laminating doughs, the chemistry around yeast products and bread and generally gained confidence with pastry," Chef Rebecca says. "The hands-on classes helped me learn more about decorating cakes and cookies, among other things."

The work was hard, but the effort paid off. In 2021, Chef Rebecca earned her diploma and began assembling the building blocks to open her bakery. Before attending ICE, she envisioned selling baked goods from her home.

A friend involved in a pie-of-the-month club for several years was a big motivator. He supported her efforts as she built her brand from home. The first step was getting a cottage operator's permit in New Jersey.

"I wanted to call my business Farmhouse Sweets and bake out of the old farmhouse I live in, which was built in 1829," says Chef Rebecca. "However, it has a small kitchen, and I have shelves of stuff I can't wait to bring to my new bakery's kitchen."

Beyond the small quarters, Chef Rebecca's other issue was that she could not sell decorated cakes. She could not make key lime, lemon meringue pies or any finished product that needed refrigeration. But she did not let this get in the way of her dream.

Chef Rebecca is now building the brick-and-mortar iteration of Farmhouse Sweets, slated to open in the fall of 2024. The location is just outside of Downtown Hackettstown, in a quaint shopping center near Route 80 with a red-brick walkway that harkens back to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

The inspiration for the name came from her love of the rustic side of New Jersey, and her logo is "Pastries with a Rustic Twist." But don't expect to find ancient furniture and appliances here. Chef Rebecca plans to outfit the interior with a sleek, modern look with quaint accents.

The future is exciting for Chef Rebecca, who wants to host decorating and other classes out of her space. She looks back fondly on her time at ICE.

"I never thought I'd have my own spot. But having the confidence to know I can make a good product helped me so much, and a lot of that came from ICE," she says.