She said baking is therapeutic.  

“It helps me kind of step away from all the chaos and it’s fun for me,” she said. “I actually started to appreciate the science a lot more because I’ve gotten older, so kind of putting things together. It’s like a little game sometimes so it’s kind of fun.” 

She spent the next 10 years working in restaurants and clubs all over the United States until she started her own business, Annie’s Signature Sweets, in 2017. 

In 2018, she started offering baking classes and soon taught over 500 of them. 

However, things soon changed. 

“When the pandemic hit, I had to think quickly how to continue my business and the way I taught in-person classes was to make sure everybody had there own twist on how they created their own desserts. They’d have a base recipe and then add some little flair to it to make it their own,” she said. 

Loparo said the industrial kitchen she used to teach baking classes is no longer available, so she offers classes over Zoom. 

“A lot of people were telling me initially, ‘I want to come to a place,’” she said. “I don’t want to have to be in my house. I want to get out, which I totally understand, but then I would hear more of, ‘I actually like being in my own kitchen.’” 

She said she’s been fortunate that the inflation and supply chain issues have not affected her business too much, but she’s working through other challenges. 

“Trying to figure out if someone is not signing up because of the time, the topic. There’s still ebbs and flows of when people sign up for classes and when they don’t. So, I’m not getting the amount of outreach for the amount of students per class,” she said. 

Loparo said despite challenges, her business connects people and she looks forward to the future. 

“I would say overall, it went a lot smoother than I anticipated, not really planning to be virtual so there’s definitely a lot of pluses that came out of it,” she said. 

For more information on Annie’s Signature Sweets, click here.