Despite growing up on box cake mixes and Easy Bake ovens, Jenna Barnard recalls the one time of year her family would make a homemade sweet treat during Christmas time. 

With her mom primarily relying on 20-minute or less recipes, this annual tradition of making gingerbread cookies instilled in Barnard a passion for challenging herself in the kitchen and jump-started a life-long love affair with baking. 

"I remember looking forward to that every year — the process of baking them, cutting them out, decorating them. I just loved it so much," Barnard told The Panther. "Those gingerbread cookies are why I fell in love with baking in the first place."

Now, years later, Barnard’s life still revolves around baking through her online blog, Butternut Bakery. The name is an homage to her hometown address on Butternut Street in Illinois. 

The idea of a career surrounding baking always seemed like a pipedream for Barnard. But the thing was, after she graduated from University of Illinois Chicago, she was uninspired with her plan of working in marketing. So, after her 9-to-5 job, she would come home and bake cookies, cakes and really anything that incorporated some sugar. 

"I didn't love what I was doing," Barnard said. "I had never really been able to find my footing in a corporate sense. But I would just come home and bake because it would fill me with joy when the workday drained me."

In 2018, she decided to take a chance and began posting her drool-worthy creations on Instagram, which, after some traction, led to the creation of the blog where she reveals each recipe. What started as a hobby has now grown into an immense platform — with over 500,000 followers on Instagram, 592,000 followers on TikTok and coverage on Business Insider and Bustle. 

Now with over 300 or so recipes behind her and several posts on her blog each week, her career as a food content creator consists of developing recipes, filming and snapping photos of those recipes and taking bites of batter and dough for testing purposes, obviously. 

What makes Butternut Bakery unique is Barnad's ability to create recipes that are allergy-friendly, with Barnard herself having sensitivities to gluten and dairy. On her website, she states that her blog can hopefully allow people to "find a mix of traditional and modified recipes to satisfy every sweet tooth."

Barnard has showcased what a "Day in the Life" looks like for a food content creator living in Arizona on her TikTok page, but essentially, she can have two different types of weeks — one that is full of brainstorming and testing recipes and the other that consists of filming the recipe in action and photographing it for the blog — usually doing three recipes per week. 

Sometimes the recipe goes completely by plan. Other times, she begins with a lemon bar recipe and ends with a brown sugar berry crumble bar. 

"This happens a lot where I immediately pivot," Barnard said. "And I think, 'You know what? Let's do something totally different. What do I have in my pantry? What do I have in my fridge?' I just batch together the things that I have on hand. Honestly, it usually turns out to be one of my favorite recipes because it's just something that happens completely in the moment."

As for her favorite recipe over the years, Barnard said it would either be her apple crisp, brown butter miso chocolate chip cookies or her "Perfect Vanilla Cupcake," which after around 10 attempts of trial and error was finally a success.   

"I was chasing after the texture and the moistness of a box cake vanilla cupcake, because those in my mind are top tier — you can't go wrong,” Barnard said. "The problem with box mix is that they are made in a lab, essentially with chemicals that you cannot get from the grocery store. So, it's very hard to be able to recreate that in a homemade form. 

“I've made a lot of vanilla cupcakes throughout my baking lifetime from other recipes that I've seen online and I was just never really excited about them. So I knew I had to find a middle ground for a cupcake that was homemade but still tasted really similar to a box mix."

Another recipe she looks back on fondly is her gluten-free cinnamon rolls. While this recipe almost made Barnard wave her apron in the air as a truce from this challenge, the result filled the dire need of creating a decadent cinnamon-roll recipe for the gluten-intolerant.

Along with developing recipes, Barnard also has strengthened her skills behind the camera — capturing and editing every single photo and video showcased on Butternut Bakery. With all of this experience, she released an e-book titled "The Importance of Food Photography" which emphasizes how everything down to a cookie's texture and consistency is critical when taking photos that will be posted to social media. 

"I had doubts. I was like, 'Who's going to buy this? Why would anyone buy this?'” Barnard said. “I compiled all of my knowledge from the past five years of photography and put it all in one place to help out food bloggers. There's a big surge of people creating food blogs and food content and I just would love to help them out."

Kristin Ross, resident of Irvine and a longtime follower of Butternut Bakery, told The Panther that Barnard's recipes are just as indulgent as they look in photos — with her roasted strawberry cupcake recipe being a favorite to make with her mom.

"She comes across as super personal and sincere," Ross said. "You can tell she loves her craft and puts a lot of thought and time into her recipes. Anytime I'm looking for a good cake or frosting recipe, she's my go-to. Her recipes are well thought out, not overly complicated, but always top notch."  

For anyone, in college or otherwise, that is interested in a career of food blogging or becoming a food content creator, Barnard advises to follow your own path and celebrate your ingenuity rather than compare yourself to everyone else. 

"Bake for yourself and what gives you joy — that will fuel your creativity," Barnard said. "It's very easy to get caught up in the process of creating content for other people and it can be very hard to get back to the roots of why you started. Enjoy baking and don't get caught up in everything else."

As for the future, Barnard said she is planning on eventually releasing a cookbook. But until then, she hopes to add some help to her current solo team, create some more cocktail recipes (since they are the "dessert of drinks") and continue to play around with chocolate chips and flaky sea salt in her kitchen. 

"I just want people to be inspired to bake whether they are someone who bakes often or any amateur baker who wants to try and level up," Barnard said. "To hear people really apply themselves and challenge themselves in the kitchen with one of my dessert recipes is the greatest thing I could ever do."