The past year has seen most of us spending more time indoors, and more specifically—in the kitchen. But cooking can be a daunting task, and some recipes out there are quite labor-intensive. Luckily for us, there are those who offer a helping hand when it comes to working our way through the kitchen.
Recipe developer, food stylist, and cookbook author Dana Shultz is one of those guardian angels. The mastermind behind the successful food blog-turned viral Instagram page, Minimalist Baker, her goal is to make cooking a lot more easier and approachable.
“All eaters are welcome,” reads her website’s caption, as she invites the most novices of cooks to take a (tiny) leap of faith. The idea is simple: Shultz shares recipes that require 10 ingredients or less, 1 bowl, or 30 minutes or less to prepare. The meals vary (from savory to sweet) and most are plant-based. Shultz also shies away from fancy/expensive ingredients.
“Minimalist Baker was born out of a desire to make simple cooking available to the everyday cook—like me,” explained the recipe developer in an interview with Portland Monthly. “I would go and look at recipes on blogs and was generally evaluating whether or not I’d make the recipes based on how much time, equipment, and number of ingredients they required. I wanted simple, and it wasn’t there.”
Shultz’s intuition—that there’s a market for simple recipes—proved correct, and these days her fanbase on Instagram alone is staggering (some 2 million followers to date, and counting!).
“Our plans include continuing to perfect and improve what we already do on Minimalist Baker, which is to provide simple, plant-based recipes that are mind-blowingly delicious,” says Shultz. “If we can keep doing that, I think there will always be a place for us in the internet world and beyond.”
Get cooking! You have no excuse!
