Eat. Drink. Repeat. From neighborhood gems and food trucks to Michelin star restaurants, “Feast Your Way Through the East Bay” during the 10 days of Oakland Restaurant Week 2023.
Recommend: chocolate salted caramel cupcakes, mocha chai cake, lemongrass raspberry cake, and almond orange shortbread cookies simply tantalize the taste buds.
History
Yahshimabet Sellassie, founder & CEO of Yahshi Bakes, developed her culinary interest at the tender age of four. Born in Oakland as a vegetarian to entrepreneur parents in fine arts, design, bodywork, radio journalism, and the restaurant business, she naturally blossomed into her own creative energy field. From an early age she gravitated towards the arts in the forms of drawing, painting, and sculpting; later developing a passion for cooking and baking. Yahshimabet is influenced by her Jamaican father and her mother’s Ethiopian roots, incorporating traditional spices into her cuisine. At age seven she became seriously interested in learning how to cook and bake independently, making something new for her family to enjoy most weekends. Yahshimabet explored her culinary creativity with her younger siblings Taqami and Wdassae as the first taste testers. She enjoyed making granola, cupcakes, cookies, pancakes, tarts, and savory dishes, some of which became trademark items for her business.
Her passion to represent her heritage in her food stems from exposure to the medicinal properties of spices as well as how they were traditionally used in her parent’s culture. Heart-opening cardamom is one of her favorite spices to use, which she features in her orange cardamom coffee cake, almond cardamom shortbread, and chai cupcakes. Korerima is Ethiopian cardamom which she grinds fresh to infuse into her pastries. Yahshimabet heard about the Kids Baking Championship from Cheryl Lew (owner of Montclair Baking) who encouraged her to apply for the Food Network competition.
She was only twelve years young at the time but competed for eight rounds and landed the runner-up position in the series, gaining media attention worldwide. People began to request her products on an international level, desperate to try Yahshi Bakes, “A Taste of Heaven.” Subsequently, Yahshimabet began hosting monthly pop-ups at Souly Body, her mother’s massage studio on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. Crowds gathered in lines out the door with reusable containers to try “A Taste of Heaven.
