“For me, food has always been a language. It’s a way I can connect with other people and show love,” says Amber Ahmad as she rolls out Ma’Amour cookie dough in her Dumbo kitchen. A cold rain continues to fall outside. The interior is light, with sage candles, cashmere blankets on the sofas, and soft jazz music playing in the background, creating an easygoing, well-curated sense of coziness. The air smells like sugar, dates, and butter.
Ahmad didn’t follow the traditional path to becoming a baker. There was no cooking school or working at a Michelin-starred restaurant. But as she grew up in Marquette, Michigan, the child of Pakistani immigrants, food has always been a part of who she is. She was baking with her mother, her sister, and her Finnish nanny, “Gram.” (“She wrapped me in a blanket and made me stand on the counter,” Ahmad recalls. “While she baked, she told me stories about her childhood and They told me stories about when they first got married, or what life was like on the farm.”)
During the summer, they spent two months with their extended family in Pakistan, where there was always something on the stove or oven. Then, come August, the Ahmad family will spend the month in entirely new countries like Sweden and Spain. “The first thing my parents do is go and talk to all the local shopkeepers and taxi drivers. They asked them where we should go and eat.” she explains. Even into adulthood, she continued her curiosity and affinity for cooking. Although she worked grueling hours as an investment banker, her specialty was global food development. She used to bake for her friends every holiday, every party she had.
One day, one of her clients, famous celebrity chef Tom Colicchio, asked her about her hobby. He asked her if he could try some of her girlfriend’s baked goods. “We spent three days making everything we knew how to make, from biscuits to cookies to cheesecake. At the end of it, he looked at my food, looked at me and said, ‘ What do you want to do with this?”
Photography: Fujio Emura
