Claire Saftz Shares Journey to Celebrity Chef Career

By BREANNA MASCI Sun Staff Writer

Claire Saffitz, a recipe developer and cookbook author visited, Cornell this past Friday, March 3 for a signing at The Cornell Store of her latest recipe book, “What’s for Dessert: Simple Recipes for Dessert People,” followed by a question and answer session in Statler Auditorium.

Hosted by Matthew Merril ’26, a chef influencer and Kids Baking Championship competitor, the sold-out Q&A offered Cornellians a chance to hear how Saffitz started her journey as a food lover and built her passion into a career as a food writer.

Having majored in history as an undergraduate at Harvard, Saffitz did not immediately pursue her interests in food culture. Only years after graduating did she realize cooking was where her true passion lied.

“All I wanted to do was cook all the time,” Saffitz said. “I would read about cookbooks, I would go buy the cookbooks and I would cook from the cookbooks. And I realized, at a certain point, that [food culture] was the only thing I had a really sustained interest in.”

Raised in a tight-knit family where cooking was a means of bonding, Saffitz’s passion for making meals and creating recipes stemmed from her childhood.

“Food was always a big part of my family and the time we spent together and how we socialized and related to one another,” Saffitz said.

After one year at École Supérieure de Cuisine Française and graduate school at McGill University, Saffitz began focusing on her passion and has since been featured on Bon Apppétit’s “Gourmet Makes” series on YouTube, along with being a contributing editor of Bon Apppétit magazine and publishing two of her own cookbooks.

Saffitz said inspiration for creating a recipe starts as an idea and then, from there, testing reveals whether the dish is actually feasible and worthwhile to prepare.