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Joy Cho started a micro-bakery out of her Brooklyn apartment in 2020, selling boxes of pastries that included her specialty: gem cakes. Those little cakes became an internet sensation—but they’re not all she bakes. Now, as a full-time freelance recipe developer, Cho spends her days baking, and baking, and baking some more in the process of creating and testing recipes. Here are the tools she uses most in a kitchen that sees tons of action.
Marble rolling pin with wooden cradle
Cho had never actually owned a rolling pin before she received this luxurious marble number from a friend a few years ago. “I might have tried using a wine bottle or something like that [instead],” she says. (Pro bakers! They’re just like us!) This particular model was a life-changing gift. It comes with a dedicated wooden cradle, so you can nest the rolling pin in a chic little holder when you’re not using it. And since the whole set is so pretty, you might just want to keep it out on your countertop. Cho also loves the added weight of the marble; the heft gives her more leverage, so she doesn’t have to exert as much force pushing down on dough. “I've noticed that it just gives me more control and mobility, and the results feel more consistent every time,” Cho says.
Pam baking cooking spray
Cho discovered the magic (extreme emphasis on magic) of Pam baking spray through trial and error. The year was 2021. She was in the throes of running Joy Cho Pastry and was making and selling a lot (like, a lot) of her signature gem cakes. You make the cakes in a Bundt brownie pan—and Bundt cakes, with all their beautiful nooks and crannies, are notorious for sticking to their baking mold. She’d tried every trick in the book to get that clean release (normal cooking spray, butter, flour, and sugar) to mixed results. “I was wasting two or three gem cakes per batch. I really needed all of them to release very cleanly,” Cho says. She figured she might as well try Pam. And the humble grocery store staple turned out to be just the ticket. “My Bundt cakes are also pretty intricate and small, so they’re the perfect litmus test for how well the spray works. I’ve had zero of them stick when I use Pam.” And there’s no fussing with a two-step butter and flouring process that ends with cakes with weird floury patches on them. All she has to do is give her mold a quick spray, fill it with batter, bake, and simply release with an offset spatula.
Microplane zester/grater
Maybe you use your Microplane zester more for savory applications, but Cho says it’s been a staple in her baking tool kit since pastry school. “For a recipe I was making at a test kitchen shoot a few weeks ago, I needed to grate carrots for a cake,” Cho says. “I opted for a microplane because it adds that finer texture to carrot cake that you might not normally get with just the coarse grate on a box grater.” For Cho, a zester offers more control than a box grater and yields super fine threads of citrus, of course, but also of chocolate and cheese.
